Deep Preaching: Shine - Helps on Revealing the Treasure of Truth

Steven W. Smith is Dean of The College at Southwestern and author of Dying to Preach, winner of Preaching Today’s "Book of the Year" in 2009. He is married to Ashley. They have two daughters (Jewell and Sydney) and one son (Shepherd).

*Editor’s Note: This post is the fourth and last in Dr. Smith’s series, “Deep Preaching.”

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A sea diver finds a treasure that has been buried for 200 years and you get to see it. What do you expect to see? Well, the treasure is in fact a treasure because of its age. No one has really been able to get a good look at this – it’s rare. It also has inherent value because of its beauty. However, when the diver surfaces you can see none of that. It is covered in the oceanic grime of centuries. It is a treasure by itself, the value is inherent, but the beauty of the treasure is not seen until he takes the time to remove the things that show its beauty.

On Monday, a preacher entered the study. He decided not to be superficial, but to go deep into the Word of God. He desperately wanted to mine out the treasure of the Word for his people, so he did not stop until he got to the bottom where the treasure lay. And, wisely, he did it in time. He got the treasure and began to go to the surface. As a result he has a well crafted structure to his sermon that mirrors the structure of the text. He sank for treasure. He surfaced to bring the treasure to the people. But before he enters the pulpit he must polish off the sermon. He must remove the barriers that impede a view of the beauty of Scripture.

How to Polish

Scripture needs nothing added to it. We add nothing. However, the people to whom we preach are so removed from the cultural and theological worlds of Scripture that they need someone to remove the barriers that keep them from seeing the truth clearly. So by "polish" I am not suggesting that we add to the Word. It does not need our rhetorical flourish. Rather, I am using the word "polish" to describe the process by which we remove anything that keeps people from seeing the beauty of the Scripture. Personally, I am an advocate of a plain style of preaching. By that I mean that we need to remove any forced words or structure that keeps people from seeing truth clearly.

However, demonstrating the simplicity of Scripture is not easy. Simplicity is extremely difficult. So here are some strategies to help so show the beauty of the Word:

1. Look for models.

I am not aware of an effective preacher who is not reading widely or listening to other sermons. To steal another’s sermon is a crime. However, we are always looking for ways to say the same things in new ways. The flavor of someone’s communication style, the insight into a text: these things can be learned by humbling ourselves and reading others.

2. Manuscript for clarity.

Manuscripting does not imply that you will preach with the document in front of you, it simple means that you have worked out the key phrases, you have the transitions down, you know how one thing will lead to the next. You know all of this because it is one complete document. The discipline also keeps you on task so that when you read through it you will see where you have gaps in logic or flow, it will really jump out. As a pastor, I rarely manuscripted my sermons, and I think I paid the price in a lack of oral clarity. I leave the manuscript on the hard drive, but the discipline of doing it is very helpful. If I am pressed for time, I will at least manuscript the introduction and the conclusion.

3. Never preach a sermon for the first time.

Once the manuscript is complete, stand up in the study and preach through the sermon. One pastor I know gets to the church early Sunday morning and preaches it from the pulpit. The goal is that when you enter the pulpit, you do so with confidence because this is a sermon you have already preached!

My dad used to tell me that preaching “goes from paper, to preaching, to paper." What he meant was that in the study as we are “writing” our sermons, a thought will come to us. The natural reaction is to preach it out loud. It is often in the vocal working out of this that the thoughts really come together. So we write, we preach, and then we write some more.

4. Listen to the Holy Spirit.

This is so subjective that I hesitate to insert it here. An encouragement to be “sensitive to the Spirit” is interpreted by some to mean "don’t study and just go for it." We don’t mean that. What we mean is that often from the moment of leaving the study to the time when enter the pulpit, the Holy Spirit will prompt us in certain directions. This may happen at any time before or during the sermon. It is often in those promptings that a way to express something becomes clearer. One preacher told me he prints out his sermon, lays it on his bedside, and reads through before he goes to sleep on Saturday night.

Deep Preaching

So, after we sink and surface, we must shine. To do less is laziness no matter how we describe it. So again, when we dive into the text we must leave time to surface by understanding the structure of Scripture, and to shine by removing anything that hides its beauty. After all you risked your life at the bottom of the ocean for this, you want your people to know that the treasure is worth risking their life for. The goal is that when they began to love the words of the Word, they will want to go deep themselves.

A pastor then knows that he is effective when he never dives alone.

Deep Preaching: Surface - Preaching that Brings the Truth to the Top

Steven W. Smith is Dean of The College at Southwestern and author of Dying to Preach, winner of Preaching Today’s "Book of the Year" in 2009. He is married to Ashley. They have two daughters (Jewell and Sydney) and one son (Shepherd).

*Editor's Note: This post is the third in Dr. Smith's series, "Deep Preaching."

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If sinking to find the treasure is the translation of the text, surfacing is the communication of the text. We know we sank deep when we say, “I know what this text means.” We know we have surfaced when we can say, “Now I know how to say it."

In the last post we discussed going deep enough that we know what a text means. This is the preacher’s work in the study with linguistic and exegetical tools. However, there is a danger in going deep, namely staying so long wrestling with the meaning that we never surface to find a way to say what the text means. When people hear preaching and say, “He was so deep, I didn’t understand a thing!” that is not a compliment. It probably means that the preacher did not understand the text himself. Or, perhaps he did understand it, but he stayed so long in the deep murky waters of the study, he did not surface. His problem is never being shallow, but being so deep others cannot understand him. However, when you understand something thoroughly, you are generally able to make it clear.

It goes without saying that we are not advocating shallow preaching. We are advocating going as deep as we can and then coming to the surface in time.

Preaching at its core is the translation and communication of the text. The translation works the text into our hearts; the communication works it out. There are times that we are called upon to say speak before God has spoken to us in His word. Yet there are other times that when God has spoken to us through His word, we understand it, but we have not done the necessary work to find a way to work out what God has worked in. We may gravitate toward the translation side of things because we like the time in the study. Or, we may gravitate toward the communication side of things because we enjoy the preaching moment, the thrill of engaging communication. We all have our strengths. 

So when we sink deep enough to find out the meaning of the text, how do we surface in a way that people can understand the meaning?

OK, there are roughly one million things to say here which have been said in thousands of books.  However, this list represents some things that I struggle with and things that I don’t think we cover well enough in formal training; so not exhaustive, just a few diving strategies that will help you surface on time.

1. Repent

If a preacher is not willing to bend his will to the text, then it will never live in the pulpit.This may be the hardest part of the process.When we arrive at a text of Scripture and it calls us to change something about our character, confess a sin, right a wrong, we must do so immediately.What is at stake, of course, is our own sanctification.However, what is also at stake is the sanctification of others.This is a heavy thing to bear, but it is no less true.Procrastinated repentance is the foundation on which unprepared sermons are built.Meditate on I Timothy 4:16.

2. Look for a clear structure borrowed from the text.

When we sink to see the treasure of Scripture, a structure will emerge.The structure will be based on the genre.An epistle will have the feel of a lecture or a lesson.It may even be filled with commands like the 50+ exhortations found in James.However, a sermon on an Old Testament narrative does not need points.They simply are not there.The narrative is built around the scenes of the story.A parable will have scenes that are sometimes followed with Christ commentary on the parable, so in one sermon you have narrative (the parable proper), and exhortation (Christ’s commentary on the parable).We don’t have to scramble for a structure for the sermon; we simple borrow the one provided for us by the text.The reason for this is simple: there is meaning at the structural level.So mirroring the structure is actually a part of finding the meaning.

3. Emerge with the spirit of the text in mind.

Every text of Scripture has an embedded emotional design.When we preach we are not just communicating the substance, and borrowing the structure, we are finding out what about the emotional design of the text has meaning as well.Was it the beauty of poetry, the sting of a rebuke, or the rising tension of a narrative?All of those are embedded to help us with the meaning of the text.

Phillips Brooks says that preaching is “truth through personality."I agree with the spirit of this, but my job is not to front my personality.Rather, I can gladly borrow the personality of the Scripture that is imbedded in the genre.

4. Stop studying.

The best preachers know when to stop.They know when they are done with the exegetical process – what the text means, and can move to the communication process – how I say what it means.If God were to give you 100 hours to prepare, this would be a different sermon.But He hasn’t; you just have a few hours.In the few hours God has given you to steward, there comes a point when you are done - you just have to be wise enough to recognize when that is.

At some point you say, “I know what this text means to the best of my ability, now I have to spend time figuring out how to say it."

One encouragement is that every text is different.Some texts demand more exegetical work and others more communication work. For example, if you are preaching the parable of the lost sheep in Luke 15, you will find the meaning pretty close to the surface.You will need less time on the exegetical side.However, that parable is so well known that you will need more time trying to figure out how to say it in a fresh way.

If you are preaching the rich man and Lazarus from Luke 16, you will need plenty of time on the exegetical side of things to read yourself clear in that text.The meaning of the text is not near the surface and it demands much more time in the study.

So, you sank deeply to find the treasure, you surfaced with a clear outline that reflects the structure and the spirit of the text.  All that remains is to show its beauty, which is the subject of the next post.

Deep Preaching: Sink - The Value of Sinking Before You Surface

Steven W. Smith is Dean of The College at Southwestern and author of Dying to Preach, winner of Preaching Today’s "Book of the Year" in 2009. He is married to Ashley. They have two daughters (Jewell and Sydney) and one son (Shepherd).

*Editor's Note: This post is the second in Dr. Smith's series, "Deep Preaching."

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Deep sea diving is dangerous. You can deplete yourself of oxygen, do permanent damage to your body, and of course die a slow painful death by drowning. These fears are very real to the deep sea diver, and they are no less real to the preacher.

So, why go deep into the meaning of a Scripture?

Consider the risk: the preacher can spend so long in the icy black of commentaries, online resources, and exegetical nuance that he cripples himself by the fear of saying something wrong. He might spend so long there that he picks up words and phrases that do not translate well for surface-dwellers. And, then there is the greatest risk of all – he might not surface on time. Perhaps he is so enthralled in the depth of his study that when he finally looks at his watch, he realizes he does not have enough time to surface! It is Saturday night and he is still a hundred feet below the meaning of this text. He still does not know what this text means. He then enters the pulpit with a half-prepared alchemy of the collected thoughts of others, garnished with a compelling introduction and conclusion.

Besides, we have heard deep preachers before: boring, academic, exegetical – no thanks.

Even though the fears are real, if the preacher is going to dispense truth he must sink deep enough to find the truth, surface in time to present the truth, and polish it in a way that makes the truth accessible. He must sink to find the treasure and surface in time to make the truth shine.

If the Risk is So Great, Why Go Deep? 

The reason is clear: the meaning of a text is rarely on the surface. If what our people need was naturally on the surface, then Scripture would only need proclamation and not explanation. A few thousand years have passed since the writing of Scripture. A lot has changed. There has been a shift in the way we communicate and learn – from an oral tradition, to a written tradition, to a literate tradition, to an electronic tradition, and now to principally a visual tradition. The way we communicate, and thus the way we learn has radically changed. To borrow a phrase, these realities separate the modern listener from the ancient text.

Also, when God composed Scripture He imbedded it with meaning in its structure as well as its substance. The way sentences and clauses are shaped carry meaning. Yet, there is also meaning on the macro level as well as the micro level of Scripture; on the structural level of the cannon of Scripture. What superficial, cursory reading of Scripture will see that the Warrior Messiah image of Rev. 19 is directly lifted from Psalm 2? Will the most studious of our people see Psalm 78 is fulfilled in Matt 13? These textual relationships are real. They have meaning. They were meant to be seen. And, they are not on the surface. They must be mined from the bottom with the daunting slough of hard work.

It might be good to stop here and recognize that this metaphor may be offensive to some. After all it suggests that the people are on the surface, and that they are far separated from Scripture. Surely this line of thinking is suspect. Isn’t the word of God for all people? If all truth is God’s truth isn’t all truth for all people? Don’t we all have access to Scripture? Or are we so arrogant to think, as the character Mack bemoaned in The Shack, “God’s voice had been reduced to paper, and even that paper had to be moderated and deciphered by the proper authorities and intellects.”[1]

I am not sure how wide reaching this line of thinking is, however, the objection is out there and we have to address it. So are we suggesting by this metaphor that understanding Scripture is only for the spiritually or cultural elite? Of course not. Perhaps two responses are needed.

First, we need not confuse God’s accessibility with His intricacy. God is accessible. I happen to believe that giving people a copy of God’s word is a wonderful way to share the faith. In fact, when I have the chance to share my faith I find that whatever text I am preparing or meditating on is a great entry point. This is especially true of the parables. What parable it is does not matter. All of them are about the kingdom and they all ultimately provide a way to share the Gospel. Why? Because God’s Word is accessible to all people at all times in an unlimited number of ways. We are all swimming in the tsunami of grace that was brought to us by the sweet simplicity of God’s accessibility.

This does not mean that Scripture is always easy to understand. There are a number of texts that do not make sense on the surface, or even after a few readings. The majority of these are actually easy to understand if someone has a basic understanding of how Scripture relates to itself or the cultural background in which it was written. In other words, a medium amount of training can equip one to understand most of Scripture. To deal with the other hard texts, one needs a little more training.

So again, God is both simple and complex. And since words reveal character, we anticipate that His word is both simple and complex. God is accessible – therefore His word is accessible. God is intricate, nuanced, and complex – His word reflects that as well.

God Expects Us to Go Deep

But, one might say, doesn’t it bother you that you are suggesting that the average person can’t get the meaning of certain passages at first blush? It really doesn’t. I don’t think it bothers the average person either. My experience is that they want to hear from someone who has thought about these things more deeply than they have to provide insight, wisdom, and counsel. And beyond this lay expectation, there is a divine expectation as well. Scripture is clear about the fact that pastor’s are to guard the sacred trust with their very lives (I Timothy 4:16; 6:20; II Timothy 1:13,14; 2:1-7; Titus 1:9). Nothing is clearer from Scripture than the fact that those held accountable for preaching have a dual stewardship: to protect God’s sheep and protect God’s Word. We keep the sheep safe by keeping the sword sharp. Both stewardships come from God.

So, when we mount the pulpit, God expects us to be deep. Our people should expect that we have gone deep. Not muddled or convoluted preaching, but preaching that demonstrates that we have wrestled with the text long enough that we are clear; we know the meaning to the best of our understanding. This is the objective. When it is clear to us, it has a chance to be clear to them. The greatest compliment one could pay a preacher is when they say, “Now I know what that text means."

We may think of this as a nice, but unattainable, goal for those who are really going to get into their preaching at a high level. But really, it’s what our people want.

People will excuse about any kind of preaching except boring preaching. But remember that there are two types of boredom – intellectual boredom and emotional boredom. Preachers often fear emotional boredom so we try to make people laugh and cry in the sermon. However, it is possible to be emotionally engaging and intellectually boring. This, in my opinion, is a chief reason why more college students are not engaged in church. Their pastor stimulated their emotions; he just did not make them think. He surfaced before he sank.

Deep diving is dangerous. However, the risk of sinking deep is no greater than the risk of staying on the surface. In the first you die, in the second your people die. And at the end of the day, if we have to tell our Dive Master that we almost died while trying to get people deep, He will understand. He’s made that dive before.

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[1] Young, William P. The Shack: where tragedy confronts eternity. Newbury Park, CA: Windlown Media, 2007.

Deep Preaching

Steven W. Smith is Dean of The College at Southwestern and author of Dying to Preach, winner of Preaching Today's "Book of the Year" in 2009. He is married to Ashley. They have two daughters (Jewell and Sydney) and one son (Shepherd).

*Editor's Note: This article was originally posted at Theological Matters. Dr. Smith will be writing three follow-up posts for Project TGM as a series entitled "Deep Preaching."

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There are days when the sermon just feels “on.”

The illustrations hit just right. The applications connect. Preacher and people ebb and flow in synchronized rhythm from opening words to closing illustration.

Dismounting the pulpit, you will be shocked if the people don’t hoist you on their shoulders hailing you as the greatest preacher in the world. In fact you’re a little surprised they didn’t interrupt you with shouts and applause like a political rally. (The humble tweet that follows: “God was really good today,” belies the fact that you killed it. Killed. It.)

Yet, in my experience, this is rare. It happens, but not often. Rarely is a sermon, from start to finish, exactly what we want it to be.

How Are We to Evaluate Our Own Preaching?

For those with a commitment to the inerrancy and sufficiency of Scripture, we evaluate our preaching by one criterion: faithfulness. After all, we do not invent messages, we proclaim truth. So we measure our effectiveness by how faithful we are to the text. In fact, this is the only reason I preach. By God’s grace we may mount the pulpit free from any obligation to express our feeling on anything—much less eternal matters. Eternal truth is settled. We are in the business of delivering the message not inventing it. Therefore, we must be faithful.

And yet, this being true, why is it that so many times my best attempt at faithfulness to Scripture falls flat? I really did try to say what the Scripture said and say it the way the Scripture said it, but it just did not work. I am not suggesting there is more than faithfulness; I am suggesting that we who are faithful must constantly re-examine what we mean by that.

If by “faithful” we mean simply getting the text correct, then we have failed. If you’re passionate about preaching, then that last sentence may seem disconcerting, so let me clarify. We know that there is a glut of preaching today that has precious little to do with a text of Scripture. This breaks our hearts. Scripture alone is enough! In reaction to this, it’s possible to swim against the tide of shallow, light, trivial, entertaining preaching by countering it with preaching that is boring, mundane, passionless, and disengaging. Some of us who love Scripture the most are profoundly boring. Just to be clear, I am not saying this as a reformer but a penitent. This might be my biggest homiletic challenge. I want to be so clear about what the text says that often I can be dry. People are disengaged and bored. Of course when I realize this, I justify my ineffective preaching with an internal monologue that says, “Well, at least I got the text right. Those other guys, sure they were engaging, but they never dealt with the text.”

A light, trivial, man-centered sermon is a mix of God’s Word and man’s hubris. But isn’t there as much hubris in preaching that is academic boredom as there is in preaching that is folksy banter? Let’s be honest. We can’t excuse boring sermons because we parsed our verbs correctly any more than we can excuse light fluffy sermons because we entertained.

Scripture is not boring. Therefore, if I preach a boring sermon, then that was not in the text. I brought that. I imposed boredom on the text in the same way those “other” preachers imposed their own ideas on the text.

The entertaining preacher excuses his sin because he made people laugh. The boring preacher excuses his sin because he made people yawn. Neither one has really preached. I know, because I have been both.

So, again, how are we to evaluate our preaching?

Well, first let’s crush the mental metaphor of “balance.” This metaphor gives the idea that we can be too faithful, too expositional, too exegetical, too deep, too textual, too engaging, or too funny—we just need a little of all of it. But that’s unhelpful. Can we really be too faithful to Scripture?

Maybe a better metaphor than striving for balance is embracing the tension. There is a tension in all of us—it pulls us to engage the text while engaging people. This tension does not need to be suppressed; it needs to be embraced. We are called to go deep into the text, and then bring the text to the people. If our exegesis is shallow, we have nothing to give people on Sunday. If when going deep I wait too long to surface, then I give people a dry exegetical exercise that does not help them. After I find the meaning of a text, when do I surface? In other words, when I study a text, how long do I spend on its meaning, and how long do I spend on how to say what it means? This is the tension. And, it will not go away.

Deep-Sea Divers

Now we have backed into a helpful metaphor: a deep-sea diver. The treasure that he wants is not buoyant. It’s not even at 25 ft. If he wants the real treasure, he must sink deep. However, if he stays in the depths too long, he will not have the oxygen needed to bring the treasure to the surface. Even when he does, he has to polish it off so people can see the original beauty of the treasure. If he wants to access the treasure, bring it to the surface, and have people appreciate the treasure the way it was appreciated before it sank, then he must sink, surface, and shine. And here is our task. We must spend time on what the text means, what we are to say about what the text means, and how to say it.

So while there are a thousand preaching rubrics out there, lets at least answer three questions:

1. Did I sink?

Did I go deep enough to find the treasure?

2. Did I surface?

Did I bring the treasure to the surface with illustration, application, and the force of imagination?

3. Did I shine?

Since the truth is beautiful, did I show its beauty or lazily offer it unpolished?

May God give us grace to go deep and be so overwhelmed with what we find that we want to surface in time and show the rich beauty of the treasure, which will exalt Christ and call us to joyful obedience.