We’re looking at the 10 Steps of Creative Digital Sermon Preparation in Logos Bible Software, and it’s now time to discover the Bible text’s Big Idea on our way to preparing an expository sermon. Many preachers will call this main idea, the thesis, the textual ideal, or the sermon idea of the text. The term Big Idea comes from my mentor, Haddon Robinson.
Haddon Robinson’s “Big Idea” preaching came from a collection of his disciples, who put together a book entitled The Big Idea of Biblical Preaching: Connecting the Bible to People, edited by Scott Gibson and Keith Wilhite (partner link for Logos digital copy. If you prefer a physical copy, get it on Amazon).
Every passage of Scripture has a message for the original audience that we can apply to a modern audience. We want to learn what the author wished the original audience to take away from the text and share that Big Idea with our audience today. The preacher tells his modern audience what God wants them to understand and apply today. How do we do that?
What Is the Bible Text’s Big Idea – The Target Analogy
Discovering the Bible text’s Big Idea of the Text starts with the first three steps of our ten steps for creative digital preaching, which we already covered in the first four posts in the series.:
- Prayerfully Choosing a Passage
- Making Observations and Recording Those Observations
- Asking Interpretive Questions and Answering Them
I’ll bet you’ve said or heard someone say, “What’s the Big Idea?” A person experiences something shocking and they ask, “What’s the Big Idea?” They don’t fully understand their circumstances but want to. So they ask and use the phrase we’re using. A Big Idea tells you the primary idea behind a passage. We try to hit the target.
Image by meineresterampe from Pixabay
We can’t ask God in person if our Big Idea hits the bullseye, but we can prayerfully ask the Holy Spirit to guide us to that target and hit the bullseye.
Questions to Help in Discovering the Bible Text’s Big Idea
To find your bullseye, begin by reviewing what you’ve learned in the first 3 steps. Then you will want to answer a few key questions, which we’ll look at next. Hopefully, you recorded the findings from steps 1-3 in notes anchored to your passage in Logos Bible Study. Read the notes prayerfully, asking God what he wants you to preach. You’re asking God to reveal His Big Idea to you so you can share it with your congregation.
The author of the Biblical passage had a message in mind. We want to discover what that was and state it creatively and interestingly.
English Sentence Diagramming Helps You Discover the Big Idea of a Text
We now look at a challenging but helpful exercise of 75% science and 25% art. Sentence Diagramming will help you see the Biblical text visually. Hebrew or Greek experts can use the original languages to create a Sentence Diagram. However, most of us would do a better job using a literal English translation like the following:
The practice of Sentence Diagramming helps us see the structure of the passage visually.
- King James Version
- New King James Version
- New American Standard Bible
- English Standard Version
- Legacy Standard Bible
- Revised Standard Version
- Young’s Literal Translation
- American Standard Version
The above translations create a literal translation that’s still readable in modern English.
Avoid paraphrases or dynamic equivalent translations in this step even if you primarily use them for the rest of your study. These include…
- NLT or NLB
- CSB
- NIV
- The Message
- NRSV
I don’t use the diagramming tool the same way. However, I use it similarly to Justin’s. Below you’ll see a finished diagram I created in Logos.
When you finish a sentence diagram, you will see a pattern that might show you the main idea because all of the rest of the passage will connect to that main idea. In the above diagram, you can see that the subject has something to do with fear and dismay. With that, we see that God is both with us and He is our God. Because of that, he is going to do three things with his righteous right hand.
Bridging from Text to Big Idea Using Questions
To get to that final Big Idea or main idea, we start by asking a series of questions. These are not the same as the Interpretive Questions we used in our research in step three. These questions serve as a bridge between our new information and The Big Idea and the outline of the sermon as follows:
- What does this passage teach us about God?
- What does this passage say about the condition of humanity?
- Who was the author of the passage?
- Who was the author’s primary audience?
- What was the situation or reason for writing?
- What are the primary sins this passage deals with?
- Are there solutions to the sin problem in the passage?
- What is the purpose of this passage today?
We see a form of these questions in Bryan Chapell’s Christ-Centered Preaching: Redeeming the Expository Sermon (partner link or get on Amazon in physical form). I recommend getting the Logos Mobile Education three-part video course in Logos (partner link).
Chapell offers “six critical questions” which work in a similar way to the list of questions above. They are…
- What does the text mean?
- How do I know what the text means?
- What concerns caused the text to be written?
- What do we share in common with those to (or about) whom the text was written and/or the one by whom the text was written?
- How should people now respond to the truths of the text?
- What is the most effective way I can communicate the meaning of the text.?
Chapell’s questions go further into sermon development, but they can help discover the Big Idea of the text. Of the two sets of questions, I prefer the first set over Chapell’s set.
Recording Your Answers
I create a note that gets attached to the whole passage. I attached other notes to each verse with observations and answers to interpretive questions. But this passage note serves as the place to save my thinking about the passage’s Big Idea and background information.
To add a note to the entire passage select it and then right-click and select Reference in the list on the left (#1 in the image below). Select Add note from the list on the right side of the pop-up (#2 in the image below).
Using Logos Bible Software, you can record your answers in a few ways. Add the answers to the questions from the list above and add them to your note. I recommend that you create a document with the list of questions until you become familiar with it and can do reproduce the list in your note from memory. You can also save this list in Logos as a generic note unattached to a passage.
To do that, click on Tools and then choose Notes. Now click on the New Note button in the upper right corner of the Note editor. Copy the list from above into this note and give it a name like Big Idea Questions. Open this each time you want to record answers to these questions for a passage and copy the list into the new passage note we created earlier.
Workflow in Naming the Bible Text’s Big Idea
In our previous post, we used the Workflow tool in Logos. If you haven’t read that post yet, go back and see how to use the Workflow feature in Logos. Use Workflows for this step as well.
One Workflow that comes with some packages takes Haddon Robinson’s approach and puts it into a 10-step sermon prep workflow. Look for “Haddon Robinson’s Ten Stages for Preparing Expository Sermons.”
Step three out of the ten in Haddon Robinson’s Workflow helps you “Discover the exegetical idea” another name for the Big Idea. Use the workflow to write your observations in the given box.
Subject and Complement
Now it’s time to write out the subject and complement of the passage. Together these make up the Big Idea of the passage. I record this in a Word document, which I will use to write my sermon. However, Logos gives users a Sermon Editor and you can use it instead. I find it clunky, but if you use Proclaim, Faithlife’s presentation software, you might want to consider the Sermon Editor in Logos. A final option is to use the Notes feature and record your thinking in the passage note. That keeps it searchable for future use in your preaching or teaching.
Think of the subject and complement like this. What if someone asked you a question and you chose to answer them by directing them to your chosen passage? What question might someone ask that would direct you to that passage for the answer? For example, let’s take Hebrews 11:1-3 from my screenshot above.
1- Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. 2- For by it the elders obtained a good testimony. 3- By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible. (Hebrews 11:1–3, NKJV)
Come up with a question that this passage answers. Use the “Who, what, when, where, why, and how?” questions. Don’t judge your questions yet. Brainstorm possible questions. As you brainstorm questions, keep in mind the eight questions used to help us bridge from the sermon to the Big Idea from above.
- What is faith?
- How does faith affect our view of the world?
Those are two possible questions. Which one helps us see the meaning of this passage? I prefer the first question. However, we might have two related ideas with each question guiding our understanding. The first part tells us what is faith while the second helps us see how it affects our worldview. That could give us two sermons.
The compliment then answers that question.
Faith is the substance of what we hope for and the evidence of what we cannot see and this gave the elders the hope and confidence to believe that God both framed the world by His word and made them out of what was not seen.
That’s a complicated Big Idea. We would later make it more pithy and memorable, but for now, it serves as a good working main idea.
Examples of Subjects and Compliments
Let’s take a look at some possible examples of popular passages:
18- And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. 19- Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20- teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen.
Matthew 28:18–20, NKJV
Subject: How do Jesus’ followers make disciples?
Compliment: Jesus followers make disciples under the authority of Jesus by following his commission to go to all nations and baptize and teach them to keep his commands with his continual presence.
5- Trust in the LORD with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding; 6- In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths.
Proverbs 3:5–6, NKJV
Subject: How do believers trust in the Lord?
Compliment: The Lord’s believers trust Him with all their hearts by relying on his understanding and direction.
1- I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. 2- And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Romans 12:1–2, NKJV
Subject: How can we live a life of service for Jesus?
Compliment: We serve Jesus by giving him our whole being as an act of worship and by submitting to his mind instead of the world’s.
We can debate the quality of the above subjects and compliments for these passages. You might choose something else, but we have to tie to to the study of our passage. Also, it has to come from the passage instead of from our own faulty preconceived notions.
Heresy of Misapplication
People will often misapply a subject of a passage, which ends in false teaching. You can get the subject right, but miss how it applies in modern times.
Philippians 4:13 suffers misapplication by so many athletes today. A lot of us see people write Phil 4:13 on their cleats or in their blackout face paint during football games. They stand in front of a camera with a reporters mic pointed at them and say, “Praise God! He helped me win this game.”
When you study the passage in Philippians 4 you learn that Paul discusses how he lived a life of plenty (“be full” and “abound” in v. 12) and he lived a life of having little (“to be hungry” and “to suffer need” in v. 12). And through it all, Christ faithfully brought him through it. He wrote:
12- I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. 13- I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
Philippians 4:12–13, NKJV
Instead of a subject of “How can athletes achieve great feats of strength in national title games?” it would better be stated as, “How can believers deal with a life of abundance or suffering while serving?” The answer or compliment is, “We can live a life of abundance or suffering by the strength of Christ.”
Stating a Creative Big Idea
Now that we have our subject and compliment, we want to create a creative Big Idea that is …
- Interesting
- Creative
- Simple
- Relatable
- Accurate
That will provide us with the content of our next post, which is so important, we’re going to spend an entire post on how to make a creative Big Idea statement. That will come next in our steps to a creative sermon!
Taking Hebrews 11:1-3 we might use, “How does faith change your worldview?” Our complement could read, “Faith puts hope in the invisible because God made our world out of the invisible.”
In the next step we’ll create the creative outline that gives us the framework for a Creative Digital Sermon.