Homiletics 2 File 29 Professor David Schmitt Question by: Joshua >> JOSHUA: You've talked about using logic as a way of structuring a sermon, but I'm still having trouble. I have a topic that I want to preach on. Blessing. I want to teach my hearers what it means for God to bless us. But as I look at the different logical methods and think about my topic, I'm getting confused. It seems like I've got several sermons here. How many of these do I use in my sermon? And if I don't use them all, then how do I know which one is the best one to use? >> PROF. SCHMITT: Joshua, I like that idea, a sermon on blessing. I think that's great. You know, in the service, at the close of the service, we often hear the pastor say, "The Lord bless you and keep you." And when you're speaking to people who, the only time they hear a blessing is after they've sneezed, it might be helpful for them to know exactly what's happening here. What does it mean when somebody says, "The Lord bless you." So it's a great idea. And the struggle you're having is a very typical struggle when we begin to work with logical forms of development and progression. Notice how I said "development and progression." Logic can be used when you're standing in one place developing one idea for the hearers, just as logic can be used when you're trying to take the hearers on a progression all the way through a sermon. And so one thing that will help you in this struggle is identifying, are you using logic to develop one main idea or are you using logic as a way of structuring the whole sermon? The sermon can often have logic in both places. For example, if I was going to develop a sermon logically, organize the sermon on the basis of problem/solution, as I opened with the problem, I might want to use the logic of definition to define the problem. Then I would go back to problem/solution as I tried to move to the next section, offering the solution. So thinking through where is this logic falling in terms of your sermon design, is it something you're using to develop one idea for the hearers, or is it the way in which you're trying to take them through several ideas until you reach the end is one way to start answering that question. What I'd like to do for you is take this topic, this topic of blessing, and show you how the progression of the sermon, the organization of the sermon, could use several different forms of logic to unfold what it means to be blessed for the people. So, for example, you could use as your method of development as your method of organization classification. Once again, you're taking a topic and you're classifying it, placing it in items of similar but different classes. Similar but different items within the same class. So, for example, some people who hear "blessing" mighty equate "blessing" with "luck." Other people, when they hear somebody say "The Lord bless you", they might think, well, they're giving you a wish that something good will happen. Somebody else might think that it's offering a little prayer for you: "Well, I pray that the Lord blesses you." And yet we know that "blessing" is something much different than wish, it's something much different than luck, it's something much different than a prayer. "Blessing" is something other than that, and that's what the sermon is going to be about. So the sermon is going to be organized, helping your hearers see how a blessing from God is not a wish, how a blessing from God is not a prayer, how a blessing from God is not simply luck, but how a blessing from God is when God bestows freely upon his people something that makes his favor known to the world. And that will be a definition that I use for "blessing." But at the end of the sermon, the hearers will have been able to see how everything they assumed a blessing might be a wish, luck, a prayer that these are not the things that blessing is. That blessing, instead, is a very intentional activity of God in the lives of his people. That would be the logic of classification. A second logical method would be the logic of definition. You could, say, define blessing to be any benefit that God freely bestows upon his people to make his favor known to the believer and to the world. Now, notice it's a very long definition, but that's okay because the sermon is going to take it apart piece by piece. You're going to start out by saying that a blessing is any favor God freely bestows upon a person. Now, notice here that "any favor" might be something the people need to think through, because we tend to equate blessings with things that are associated with prosperity, when, in fact, it might be that in my life, a sickness that I've encountered turned out to be one of the greatest blessings of God, something freely bestowed that he used to help me see his favor in my life and give me something to share with the world. And so you'll take your hearer step by step through each part of that definition. First you'll help them see that a blessing is any favor freely bestowed from God. Second, that it is something that helps the believer see God's gracious work. And third, that it's something that God uses through the believer to offer his blessing upon the world. If you didn't work with definition, you might want to work with cause/effect. Cause/effect is usually going to take one particular item, which is the cause, and then list for your hearers several different effects that flow from it. So if you're talking to your hearers about blessing, you might want to talk about the effects of God's blessing in our life. The first effect could be that God makes his favor known to his people. That when God blesses us, we're able to see God's favor at work in our life. Number two, the second effect of God's blessing is it sustains us in trouble. And then number three, the third effect is that God's blessing offers us hope for the future. Now, those are three effects that flow from blessing. You'll want to think through why you organize them in that method, why you didn't put hope for the future first, instead you put it last. Usually sometimes these are joined by a progression that first we see his favor, then we realize as we enter into struggle that we can rely on it so we realize that his blessing sustains us in trouble, and then third, now we have hope for the future that we share with the world, because we know that this favor of God survives through suffering and will ultimately bring us to his purposes in the end. So that would be working with a design of cause/effect, all to develop this idea of blessing. You might try comparison/contrast. In comparison/contrast, it's somewhat like classification, only this time instead of giving several different items, you're only going to give two. On the one hand, you might say that blessing is not the guarantee of a trouble free life, but it is the assurance of God's favor in the midst of life. So it's not the guarantee of a trouble free life, but it's assurance of God's favor in the midst of life. Kind of like that saying that they often have that Jesus didn't come to take away trouble; he came to be present with us in the midst of it. So your sermon is going to be designed, helping your hearers see how a common thought about blessing, that it's a trouble free life, is not what a blessing is at all. It's God's guarantee to be with us in the midst of life. The next method could be that of process. In process, you're going to walk your hearers through exactly how blessing occurs, so that they can see step by step what it means and where it happens when God blesses his people. So you could say that a blessing is when God freely chooses his people, so you're going to spend some time talking about God's free choice of people, either Israel or us today, and then you'll spend some time saying he extends his benefits to them. Third, they recognize his favor. And fourth, they see his work in the world. So we'll see God's choice of people, God's extension of benefits to them, people recognizing his favor, and people seeing his love for the world. Again, four steps that show a process of blessing occurring. And finally, the last logical method I'd like to talk about would be analogy. In this case, you take something that's perhaps common for your hearers, an experience that they know about, and you use it to help them move from what is known to that which is unknown. So if blessing is a concept that's strange to them, but you've got a congregation where a lot of your members have recently sent their kids away to school, sending their kids back to college, you might talk about how a blessing is kind of like a care package. A care package that a mother sends to her daughter away at school. Notice she could put anything in that care package. That is, a blessing is any favor that is freely bestowed. She sends that care package to the child and the child enjoys something much more than what's in the package. The child enjoys the parent's love. And so a blessing is something that is any favor freely bestowed that communicates to us God's love for us, and as in my case, with care packages, you often end up sharing them with your roommates and other people at college. Blessings are things that God's people share with other people in the world. And so taking something that is known, you help your hearer think about how a blessing is like that, so that they come to understand what may be unknown for them, the work of God blessing his people. So we've walked through several different methods of development. Now, notice of organization. Now, notice in this case, we're working on the horizontal level. We're organizing the progression of the hearer through the sermon. The question is: Which one of these is going to be best for the hearers? Well, that really is a case of knowing who your hearers are and what it is that they need to know. What type of a situation are you preaching in? Are they people who are struggling with one particular problem? For example, thinking that blessing is only having a life that is filled with wonderful things from God? And if that's the case, and they can't understand how God can still be present among them because of recent fights in the church, or things that have happened at the church, maybe the sermon's going to work well by working with comparison/contrast, and helping them see that a blessing is not having a trouble free life from God, but instead is God working in the midst of the trouble in this world. If that's not the case, if you have a different situation for your hearers, you think through: Where are my hearers at? What are they going through? And how can I use an organization that helps them put categories or organize their life experience in a way that enlightens them into God into God's word?