One Text, One Central Truth
By the end of a good week of study, a preacher's notebook is full: observations, word studies, background, cross-references, questions answered and unanswered. The danger now is not having too little to say but trying to say all of it. A sermon that says everything leaves the hearer with nothing he can carry home. The next step is to find the one idea that holds the passage together.
Jerry Vines and Jim Shaddix call this step unifying the theme. In their plan every passage has a central idea, which they call the central idea of the text, and a good expository sermon grows out of it. The idea belongs to the text before it belongs to the preacher. His job is to find it, not to invent it.
The one main truth a passage teaches, stated in a single sentence in the passage's own terms, which every part of the passage supports, explains, or applies.
The Writer Tells Us His Sum
“Now of the things which we have spoken this is the sum: We have such an high priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens;”HEBREWS 8:1 · KJV
Partway through Hebrews the writer stops and says, Now of the things which we have spoken this is the sum. The word translated sum means the chief point, the main thing. Seven chapters of argument come down to one sentence: We have such an high priest, seated at the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens. The inspired writer knew the difference between his many supporting thoughts and his main point, and he told his readers which was which. The preacher's task is to do the same for every passage he preaches: find the sum, and make it plain.
Can you say in one sentence what this passage is talking about and what it says about it?
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For Deeper Study
- Power in the Pulpit: How to Prepare and Deliver Expository SermonsAmazon Jerry Vines and Jim ShaddixThe plan this series follows; its process chapters move from the central idea of the text to the proposition, purpose, and outline.
- Biblical Preaching: The Development and Delivery of Expository MessagesAmazon Haddon W. RobinsonThe classic book on the big idea of a passage and how to state it as a subject and complement, from a broadly evangelical teacher of preaching.
- The Preacher: His Life and WorkAmazon J. H. JowettJowett's Yale lectures, published in 1912 and the source of the pregnant sentence; Jowett was a British Congregationalist.
- Between Two Worlds: The Art of Preaching in the Twentieth CenturyAmazon John StottIncludes a careful chapter on isolating the dominant thought of a text; Stott was an evangelical Anglican.
- 12 Essential Skills for Great PreachingAmazon Wayne McDillA Southern Baptist teacher of preaching with exercises for moving from a studied text to a sermon idea.
- Foxe's Book of MartyrsAmazon John FoxeThe classic Protestant record of those who died for the faith, from the early church to the English Reformation.
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Analyzing the Text
Before a preacher decides what to say, he chooses a complete unit of Scripture and studies it closely: what it says, where it sits, how its sentences are built, what its key words mean, and the world it was written in, turning to the commentaries last.
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