Considering the Spirit and Sermon Preparation

I can’t remember where I saw it.  It was a blog post on questions to ask a prospective pastor.  Many of them were good, convicting questions.  One of them was regarding sermon preparation (a standard question on many forms I filled out).  In answering the question, he made some good points for churches to consider.  But something was nagging at me.

His suggestion was 16-20 hours maximum for sermon preparation.  He made the very good point that a pastor can’t spend 40 hours on a sermon and fulfill his other responsibilities.

What I say now is not to refute anything he said, real or imagined ( this won’t be a John MacArthur-Darrin Patrick thing especially since I’m no one important and I don’t even remember who he was though they were more important than me).  It is to supplement.

Part of it is born of experience, including this week.  Sermon preparation is not a formula.  Certain tasks are required (working with the original languages and translations to exegete the text, reading a few trusted commentaries to make sure you exegeted it well, exegeting your congregation and community, thinking about the application and sermon structure).  Those tasks take time.  But they do not a sermon make.

The work of the Spirit to illumine the text is essential.  You can do all the “academic” prep work you want, but until the Spirit shines the light on what pulls it all together and points it toward Jesus- all you’ve got is the beginnings of a paper for seminary or Bible college.

Different Decade, Same Experience

This week I’ve been pounding my head on the table, wall and any other hard object I can find.  I did my analysis in Hebrew, looked at parallel passages, read 4 commentaries and a book about this portion of Scripture.  Yet, I left the office Wednesday without a “Big Idea” and therefore no sermon structure.  I was at an impasse.

You can’t put the Spirit on your schedule and agenda.  You are dependent on Him.  You pray; pleading for him to come and help you exalt Christ, edify the saints and evangelize the lost.  But he comes in the fulness of time which sometimes is on Tuesday or Wednesday.  Sometimes it is Thursday (or later).  Yes, church secretaries the world over love this.

Often it is when you least expect it.  This morning I was in bed trying not to wake up when the pieces all fell together.  I finally saw all the connections in the text that were there the whole time.  Like Hagar who couldn’t see the well right in front of her, God had to open my eyes.  The Westminster Confession of Faith calls this illumination, upon which we all are dependent whether we preach the word or study it for our personal growth.

Preparing a sermon involves lots of hard work on your part, but unless God is also at work … you work in vain (think Psalm 127).  He doesn’t do the work for you, but works in you as you work (similar to Philippians 2).  Both your work and his work are essential.  Sermons don’t drop out of the sky.  But neither are they merely your work.

While you can control when and how much work you do, you can’t control when God will do his.  Something about this is meant to keep us humble, and dependent.