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Showing posts with label Big Idea. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Big Idea. Show all posts

Thursday, July 7, 2016

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.
He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away.
Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; for the LORD knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. Psalm 1

I love the details of the text and can get lost in them and miss the big picture. The last time I preached this psalm, I did it over three or four weeks! One thing I have learned over the past year that has helped my preaching is to look for the one big idea of a passage of Scripture. So the next time I preach Psalm 1, I probably will do so in one sermon.
I used to think that this psalm was about two ways of living but really the subject is about godly living and the contrast of the wicked is only to highlight and reinforce the godly life. The big idea of Psalm one is something like, "What the godly person looks like."
What struck me this morning in my reading of this psalm is that the primary means of fruitfulness in the life of the godly is the word of God. Too often we look for other means, ways, to gain fruitfulness apart from God's word but that is futile. Spend time in his word

Monday, April 27, 2015

Getting to the Big Idea in Sermon Preparation

“No sermon is ready for preaching, nor ready for writing out, until we can express its theme in a short, pregnant sentence as clear as crystal. I find the getting of that sentence the hardest, the most exacting, and the most fruitful labour in my study. To compel oneself to fashion that sentence, to dismiss every word that is vague, ragged, ambiguous, to think oneself through to a form of words which defines the theme 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 that sentence has emerged clear as a cloudless moon.” John Henry Jowett, The Preacher, His Life and Work.