How To Preach by John VonDoloski

Here are some notes I made for teaching our men how to prepare a message. This is a process that I am going to have them work through and thought that you might be interested.

Preparing Expository Messages

I. Hermeneutics – interpreting the text
1. Pray for divine guidance and enlightenment confessing your inability to rightly divide the word of God apart from the Spirit of God.
2. Identify the text
3. Read the text (or book) multiple times (at least 7) to establish the context. You want to understand a conversation before you quote someone and pull their words out of context.
4. Treasure of Scripture Knowledge for every verse in the text, recording useful verses.
5. Read every commentary you can find on the text. Write down any insightful quotes. Note: if you search all historical interpretations and nobody agrees with you – you’re probably wrong.
6. Identify the main point of the passage also called a proposition or thesis sentence. Try to summarize it in a single sentence. This is the most important part of the message. Pray. Answer two questions: What is the text saying? What does it say about what it is saying?
7. Identify the main verse divisions of the text. Pray for them. Don’t worry about what the point will be; just identify how many points there will be from the text.

HALFTIME - Most sermons start right here or end right here. However, after doing this, you don’t have a message yet. This is the difference between a commentary and a sermon. You may know what the text is saying but you now have to determine how to deliver the message.

II. Homiletics – delivering and communicating the text
1. Pray for your heart to be right. Allow the message to speak to yourself first.
2. Meditation, meditation, meditation. Revolve it in your mind. Comparable to slow cooking meat in a crockpot until it is tender and falls apart. This is also essential when identifying the main divisions of the text. Flush them out like hunting Pheasants.
3. Develop your main divisions into main points. Three things you can do with the text. One is primary but all three present. Explain, Prove, and Apply.
4. Write out transitions between the main points showing how they connect to the main proposition.
5. Be transparent and tell of how God has used this truth in your life. If it hasn’t affected your life, why would you expect it to impact someone else’s? If it has impacted your life, you have received a blessing regardless of whether your audience is unmoved.
6. Illustration and your points must come from meditation, when God turns the light on. When the truth of the text is digested, you begin to see how it applies in your life, and see the principle manifest in everyday life. (Don’t just think of an illustration and then develop a text to support it.)
7. Develop an introduction. A way to take people from the cares of this life and the multitude of distractions and bring them into the text. Probably write this out word for word though you won’t necessarily read it. Just because this is important.
8. Write out (again word for word) a conclusion. Summarize BRIEFLY what the message is. Land the plane. Make the application answering the question of how this should change their life. Give them something to take home.
III. Pray for God to empower the message. .

6-8

#6 John Calvin- pastor Josh rightfully places him in the top 5. I don't know who I take out of the top five, but he belongs up there. One of the most profound preachers to ever live. His body of work is colossial. My favorite story about him which shows his dedication to preaching through texts. He was preaching through I believe the book of Acts, when he was kicked out of Geneva for several years. When he was allowed to return he picked right up in the same chapter and same verse.

#7 Martin Luther- The man changed the world! I am not a Protestant in that I don't believe Rome was a true church. But God used Luther greatly in the world and many of his writings are a great addition to the faith. His translation of the Bible also helped to develop a standard version of the German language and added several principles to the art of translation. Luther's hymns sparked the development of congregational singing in Christianity. His marriage, on June 13, 1525, to Katharina von Bora, a former nun, began the tradition of clerical marriage within several Christian traditions.


#8 Thomas Watson- This was the first Puritan I was ever exposed to. All of his books are simply expositions of Scripture. The man is a brilliant expositor and if I ever do a good job of expository preaching it is because I had the luxury of saturating myself with this God-soaked preacher. He is my favorite Puritan, brilliant, word-saturated but very practical and full of the Spirit in his understanding the spiritual nature of everything in Scripture.

Anyone care to round out the top 10 for me?

5 Greatest Preachers of all time

You read this kind of thing about sports starts all the time. I realize, that God makes great preachers, but He made athletes too. So here is my list: By preacher, I mean best person behind the pulpit, not greatest theologian or writer. I am basing this on sermons by these men that I have read or listened to.

#5 John Bunyan, wrote most famous book ever and uber learned, John Owen said he would give up all of his education if he could preach "like that tinker." Spent 12 years in prison because he would not quit preaching.

#4 Jonathan Edwards. Studied 13 hours a day, and when he preached, people in the crowd would mozy on over to a tent pole and hold on for dear life thinking the ground was going to open up and suck them into hell. And true to many prophets, they kicked him out of his church after 25 years for having the audacity to require regeneration to participate in the Lord's Supper.

#3 George Whitefield- The man walked with God and was used mightily in bringing about world-wide revival. I confess I have not read as much of him as I would like.

#2 John Piper- If you haven't listened to the man preach you cannot pass judgment. J. Ligon Duncan, a Presbyterian author and influential pastor of a very large church in the south heard him for the first time and thought, "I have never preached."

#1 Charles Spurgeon- Anyone who doesn't have him 1st on their list probably needs to examine their salvation. He is called the Prince of Preachers and had a ministry and ability that none have had since to such a degree and probably never will.

Thank you God for the gift of these men. Men, for whom the world was not worthy?

Knowing God Pt. 1

After receiving a plethora of books at the T4G conference I recently attended, I figured I would start reading some of the good books I have already before I start tackling the new ones. I used to be real big on having a huge library and reading. I still am a lover of good books, but not nearly what I once was. I spend the majority of my reading now on books that deal with the subjects I am covering as pastor of VCC.

In Sunday School, I am teaching a Survey of the Old Testament. I use J. Sidlow Baxter's Discover the Book and listen to my brother's lectures on the book as well. That along with studying the book itself is more information that I can comprehend and more than I can 'cram' into Sunday School.

I just finished preaching through the book of Mark and began this last week preaching through the entire book of John. For Mark, I used the following resources: Matthew Henry and John Gill's commentary, Strong and Thayer's Greek dictionaries, Websters' 1828Dictionary, and a few other resources. All of these are found on free Bible software provided by E-Sword which I cannot recommend highly enough.

I also use J.C. Ryles commentaries which can be found online and The NIV Application Commentary by David Garland. I also always check to see if John Piper has preached on the passage before or deals with the subject in other gospel accounts. I look through sermon audio and appreciated Charles Gormley's expositions through the entire book.

Going through John, pastor Josh from Indian River gave me two books, which so far have not been much help (and actually Josh might need to publically confess his coveting of books while we attended T4G) and I have AW Pinks commentary on the whole book.

On Friday night, our church is going through a book study on "What Jesus Demands from the World." If you don't appreciate Piper's ministry, you need to repent.

I actually started this blog post out to talk about a book I already owned that I just picked up and started reading, so I will talk about that in my next post. Knowing God by JI Packer.

Preach the Word

It was King James I, I believe, who became annoyed with the irrelevant ramblings of his court preacher and shouted up to the pulpit: "Either make sense or come down out of that pulpit!" The preacher replied, "I will do neither." Steve Brown, in Tabletalk, August, 1990.

Mr. Wesley, at the age of 87, in a letter to Alexander Mather, uttered these thrilling words: "Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God, and I care not a straw whether they be clergymen or laymen: such alone will shake the gates of hell, and set up the Kingdom on Heaven upon earth."

I want Answers!

Check out this video entitled "Atonement"

Could the message be any clearer concerning the need of preachers today?