I was reading the July & August edition of Bible Study Magazine today and had a
thought. The article that inspired me was by John Saddington entitled “When All Else Fails.”
He was writing about how we can take a passage that may not really be specifically about some area of personal need, like how to raise your teens, and apply the principals of that passage in that area. His example was about using the principals learned in the opening verses of Nehemiah to help parents navigate the troubled waters of raising a human who looks like an adult and acts like a child, otherwise known as a teenager.
As I read about it I was thinking, we need something that will help us as preachers to make sure we are being practical and at the same time biblical in our application.
I am a graduate of the Haddon Robinson school of Big Idea preaching. He says that to be biblical in our preaching we must study to find what is the primary Big Idea of a passage. And then present that in a way that remains faithful to the tone and meaning of the text. I try to do that, but where I often fail is in the area of practical application. I commit one of three errors.
- I am too general so that most people won’t really take the time to think hard about what I am saying (hopefully really what God is saying).
- I am fallacious in my application – I say it applies thusly while God is saying “Really? I never saw that in that text.” That’s not a good thing.
- I don’t bother – to lazy, busy or uncreative/unthinking to get that far with the text. Thus says the Lord is all I present afterwards thinking, “Wow, that was lofty but people live on earth.”
So how can we take our passage and present both biblical and practical application?
I am a visual person so it helps to have a visual illustration with which to frame this. So we are talking about real lives and most people spend lots of their hours of real living in a house. So lets use a house. Trite but everyone’s seen one.
Taking each room of the house to remind us of the various parts of our lives, go through your text and check off to see if you are being biblical and practical. If you have to use a picture, print it out and write down some notes. If I were a decent artist I’d draw you one, but let me sketch with words.
Every house has a foundation. The Big Idea of the text is your foundation. Write it down in a present tense, active voice sentence. Just one sentence. If you need help in learning how to discover the Big Idea read Scott Gibson’s salute to Haddon Robinson entitled The Big Idea of Biblical Preaching.
Now that you know your Big Idea, re-read the text to make sure you are right. Ask God to correct you if you are not. Then think about the text from the standpoint of the average person and their hurts, needs, victories, and worries. And take a tour of their house entering the front door into the living room. There you see them entertaining guests. What would the passage say about this family and their relationships with other friends or fellow church members. Think of who might be visiting.
An example from a passage I just preached, Matthew 6, talks about false piety v. inner spiritually that comes from a relationships with Christ. It is the passage in which we find Jesus instruction about prayer. He also talks about alms giving and fasting. He says don’t do it for public show but out of a sincere desire to glorify God personally and often privately. The Big Idea might be something like this: Are you more pious than a preacher? That is how I stated it in a fun way. But the more accurate description is this: how can our spiritually surpass the hypocritical church people who only do what they do for show and self aggrandizement? The answer is to do what you do with humble sincerity with only God as your audience and interest.
As the family sits with their friends, they might be tempted, if these are fellow believers or even better their pastor and his wife, to tell all about their spiritual works in order to impress them. “My, it’s difficult to make ends meet now that we are tithing 20 percent, pastor! By the way did you see that little Johnny over there has been the only member of the children’s choir to attend every one of the Christmas program rehearsals this month?”
That may be a bad example. But you get the idea. Maybe the person visiting is a salesman who go their name from a friend. As he shows off his wares he accidentally lets a cuss word slip. The mother is shocked and the father looks disapprovingly. Like the Pharisee he looks down his nose at this “publican”.
As you walk through the house you see the hallway to the bedrooms. The first door is little Johnny’s. Imagine how your text might apply to little Johnny himself. That’s right! We are preaching to kids too. Or maybe you find the need to deal with how the parents are relating to their child. Next to little Johnny’s is the Master Bedroom. There you get ideas about marriage. There is also the door to the bathroom. That room might represent to you the deepest darkest secrets of a person’s life. Off this hallway is the kitchen where families often eat and talk about their day. That along with the dining room might deal with our feeding on the Word or our interactions as a family. It might be about how we provide for our kids. And finally there is likely a study and a family room. Talk about work and entertainment.
Now you see how this can be helpful. The foundational principal may not seem like it is talking about what kinds of movies we watch. But when it relates to being overtly and falsely pious, I might give an illustration about how some men outwardly claim that they never indulge in sinful entertainment but secretly are addicted to pornography. At work they are participating in discussions about very ungodly things, but at church acting like they are the epitome of holiness.
Let me know what you think. How could we improve this analogy for application to make it more useful to those of us who preach? Comment below but remember that I moderate them to keep the spam out.
Study.
