Homiletics 2 File 26 Professor David Schmitt Question by: David >> DAVID: In Caemmerer's method for sermon preparation, we write out the goal malady means for the sermon. As I understand it, this means that we identify the malady or sin that we will treat in the sermon, the means or the gospel that we will proclaim to forgive such sin, and the goal or life application. After I do this, it seems like I've got my sermon structure. I simply start with the problem, and then move to the solution, and sometimes I close with life application. Problem, solution, application. Isn't that the right way to structure a sermon? >> PROF. SCHMITT: David, the answer to your question is really yes and no. It is a way to structure a sermon, but I would argue that it is definitely not and it should not be the only way. So I'd like to speak a little bit to you about how it is a right way, a good way, in order to structure a sermon. What you have identified is actually called a dynamic structure. Now, there are going to be three categories in which we place structures, and one of those categories is the dynamic structure. A dynamic structure is organized on the basis of the hearer's experience. In this particular case, the experience of the hearer that you're organizing the sermon on is an experience of law that that awakens their sense of sin, the gospel that awakens their sense of God's grace, and possibly a sense of God's words that direct us in the life that follows in offering thanksgiving and service to him. So law/gospel application. This sermon design has been called many things. Caemmerer, you're right, worked with goal malady means. You've also got somebody who worked with a point, problem and power. Paul Scott Wilson has actually written an entire book on this sermon design. It's called "The Four Pages of the Sermon." In "The Four Pages of the Sermon," he would argue, that your sermon has four main sections to it. One section deals with trouble in the text; the second section deals with trouble in our life; the third section deals with grace in the text; the fourth section deals with grace in our lives. So there again, you have that law/then gospel organization. I simply call it the law then gospel sermon design. This falls under a dynamic sermon because the listeners are involved simply in the experience of working through the sense of sin and God's gracious comfort that's extended to them, and that is what organizes the progression of the sermon. In fact, we actually have an example of one of these sermon designs: The sermon on the miraculous catch of fish. This is a sermon that is basically organized around three particular experiences on the part of the hearers. If you'll look at that sermon, watch how the sermon walks through an experience of the law and experience of the gospel and then an experience of words that give direction to Christian living. The preacher starts out with an experience of fear in the presence of the Almighty God. He is using the text from Isaiah and he shows us this fear of Isaiah as he's in this vision of being in the holy of holies and sees the angels flying about with living coals in their hands. Isaiah has a sense of fear in the presence of the Almighty God, and then the student moves to a story of a coworker or a colleague at business, and he talks about this individual's sense of fear before the chairman of the board. And then the third story that develops this sense of fear is the story of Peter and his sense of fear in the presence of Jesus when all of a sudden he sees this miraculous catch of fish after he has been fishing and toiling all night and catching nothing. So all three of those stories are are working kind of in a vertical manner to develop one main experience, and that is an experience of fear in the presence of God. That would be the first part of that type of a sermon, a sense of our problem. The second part of the sermon, then, deals with the idea that God changes things. And this is the sermon the part of the sermon that's going to work with that experience of the gospel. So you again move to Isaiah, you see Isaiah's life experience when God in this worship experience is able to take away his sin, is able to change something. And then you have a look at Peter and see how God has changed Peter and brought him into a life of discipleship. And then you move to a third story where you look at yourself as a hearer and you see how God enters into your life too, and in Jesus Christ God brings about a change in your life. So that would be the second major section of the sermon, again, developed by a series of three different stories, all developing the idea that God changes things. The third part of the sermon is a sermon section that deals with application. What happens in your life experience after God has changed everything? And, once again, the student looks at three different people. He looks at Isaiah, he looks at Peter, and he looks at the lives of his hearers. And one of the good things that the student does here is that the student makes sure that in this application, there's a common thread that holds all three of these experiences together, and that is the thread of witnessing. He speaks about Isaiah being a prophet to the nation. He speaks about Peter speaking at Pentecost, being a prophet to the Gentile nations. And then he speaks about us, individual listeners, being used by God to extend his kingdom into the world. So that would be the section of application. So that particular sermon is a very good example of the type of sermon you were talking about, a sermon that begins with a problem, moves to a solution, and then shows what that solution looks like in our life experience. Now, I did mention earlier, when we were talking about sermon organization, that a structure enables you to do some critical evaluation of your development. In this particular case, notice how knowing the structure of law/gospel application allows us to spend some time looking at how we develop each of those sections. And if you compare the opening section and the closing section of that sermon, notice how one section tends to be developed much more fully than the other. The preacher spends a lot of time dealing with issues and examples of our fear before an Almighty God. And when it comes to the idea of witnessing, the idea of speaking the faith to other people, here the preacher does not spend a lot of time in development. Now, you really in order to evaluate how appropriate this is for a group of hearers, you need to know the congregational context. You need to be able to enter into the pastor's shoes and examine who were his people. It may be that he was speaking to people who had just come back from a mission trip to Mexico and, therefore, they didn't need that last section of sharing their faith with others developed more fully. It could be, however, that he was speaking to a people where they don't get out there in the world, they're not involved in mission, they're very afraid to share their faith with anybody. And in that particular case, in evaluating the sermon, I would ask myself, "Do my hearers need more time spent developing the idea that we are sinful before God or perhaps do they need a little bit more time developing that idea that God uses us to speak his word to others and to bring them life?" Those are the those are the types of things that you're going to be able to do when you think about a sermon's structure. Now, we've looked at this particular sermon, we've identified its structure, and we've used it to evaluate the sermon itself. And that's what you want to do when you are preaching. But your question deals with the idea of whether or not this is the only structure that should be used. And to answer that, I think I'd I'd like to allow the person who came up with the structure to answer it. Richard Caemmerer, as you mentioned, is the one who developed this idea of goal, malady, and means. Where does it occur in his textbook? If you look at where Caemmerer puts this whole section on goal malady means, he places it in a very interesting position. His textbook is divided into the canons of rhetoric, basically, and he starts with invention. He starts with coming up with ideas. And then he moves into arrangement or putting those ideas into an order. Right now, we're working with arrangement, putting ideas into an order. But notice where Caemmerer puts goal malady means. Goal malady means is not in the section on arrangement. Goal malady means is right in between. He starts with invention, coming up with ideas. He then says, "Sit down and think through persuasion." That's what he titles the chapter, "Persuasion." "Then move to your arrangement." So the arrangement is not necessarily the same thing as the goal malady means. And the fact that Caemmerer titles it "Persuasion" is very important. Caemmerer is aware that a sermon is powerful not because it contains good stories, not because it's funny, not because it uses images. A sermon is powerful because it properly divides law and gospel in communicating that to the hearers. And so Caemmerer celebrates that, says that in writing a sermon, a preacher needs to take a moment and think through how will the law and gospel be integrated into the sermon. But Caemmerer does not want you to think that knowing how the law and the gospel are going to work is your outline. In fact, those are two separate steps. First you think through that powerful persuasive working of God's word in the lives of your people, but then you need to do the much harder task of saying, "Now how am I going to integrate that into a sermon design?" If you use a law/gospel application method of development, the integration is pretty much set for you. But Caemmerer actually challenges his students. He thinks that they perhaps have greater gifts than that. He thinks that perhaps the students are going to be able to use other sermon designs and still integrate law and gospel properly into those other sermon designs. In fact, it's kind of funny. Later in Caemmerer's career, they were writing a fest shrift for him, a collection of essays to celebrate his years in teaching. And Caemmerer was able to write an introductory essay to that collection. And as he was describing his work in teaching, and as he was looking back over his ministry, the things he did for the students, what he gave them, there's one comment he made, and he said, "I will probably be remembered for the tripod in preaching." That's what he calls it. Goal malady means. And then he said, "Which my students clumsily turned into sermon outlines." Caemmerer did not want goal malady means to necessarily be the outline. If you look at the example sermon he gives in his book, it's not arranged on the basis of goal malady means. It's not arranged on law, gospel, and then application. Caemmerer was writing in a preaching tradition where the sermon was basically organized propositionally, organized on the basis of a thought that was then logically divided for the hearers. And so it wouldn't even have been Caemmerer's main idea that goal malady means would have been the outline that you would have used most frequently. Not only Caemmerer, but also Walther does not support using a sermon that moves simply from law to gospel. In fact, in one of his lectures, he makes the statement that such a topographical division is meaningless. Such a topographical division is meaningless. And actually, can you imagine this now? In Walther's day, they're preaching sermons that are about 45 minutes long. If you were going to do first law, then gospel, imagine what it would be like to be sitting there for 15 to 20 to 25 minutes hearing only law from the preacher. Walther did not write you look at his sermons. Walther did not write sermons that were based first on the law, then on the gospel. Walther's sermons, like Caemmerer's, were organized on the basis of a logical thought. His sermon usually had a theme, and then the theme was divided into parts, God's word and then two things about God's word, and Walther knew that the great struggle for a preacher was when you try to integrate law/gospel into using another structure. And that's the reason one of the reasons he wrote all of these lectures. Trying to help students who were going to stand up and preach preach sermons that dealt with a very clear thought, logically divided for the hearers, help them integrate law and gospel properly into that sermon, rather than construct sermons that were one part law and one part gospel. And even if we don't look at Caemmerer or Walther, but we look at structure itself, did you ever notice that when you open up the Bible, all of its pages are not one part law and one part gospel? It's filled with many different forms of speech. You have parables, you have poetry, you have prayers, you have paraneses, you have history, you have chronicles, you have oracles, you have letters. All of these different ways of speaking. It's as if God is great enough that God could enter into human speech, God could take the ways in which we communicate to one another, and use them to his good purposes. And so in preaching, yes, we can rely on that as one particular outline, as a dynamic structure, starting with the law, moving to the gospel, sometimes moving into application. It's fine. It works well. But to always use that structure places a strange limit on our God, who has revealed himself as being able to speak in many different human forms and has asked the church to train up men who are able to rightly divide the word of God. Why? So that they can stand up and do law, then gospel? No. So that they can use the way their people speak, they can use the way their people think, they can use the way their people experience the world around them to rightly divide the word of God that enters into that world and, through the proper division of law and gospel, gives these people life.