…There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures. - 2 Peter 3:16 (ESV)
In previous posts, I have exhorted readers not to ask questions of students in small groups that typically fail to lead to fruitful discussion. In this post, I introduce the first of several questions that I find to be generally profitable and useful.
Here is the question: “What was the big idea of the sermon, and is it faithful to what the text says?”
This question is asking the students to check what they just heard from the preacher against what the Bible actually says. It can be put this way: “Does the Scripture say what the preacher said it says?” What do I mean by this question? To understand what I mean, it is best to review briefly what a sermon is intended to accomplish.
On Sermons and Authority
The point of a sermon is not for a preacher to share his opinions. Every preacher has his personal opinions, and they will affect his preaching in some way, at least in terms of influence if not in a greater way. But the preacher’s opinions are not the point of a sermon. Sermons should be about God’s Word, not man’s. What man wants to communicate and what God wants to communicate are not on the same level in terms of importance or priority. A preacher is a proclaimer. He heralds something. Preaching is similar to a town crier jumping up some steps and crying out, “Hear ye, hear ye!” But what are the people supposed to hear? Is it the town crier’s opinion? Of course it isn’t. The opinion matters very little. What matters instead is what the people are supposed to hear about something else. The town crier has a message. It is not his message as much as it is the authority of the one who gave him the message.
So it is with the preacher. The authority for a preacher is not his own declarations about himself but the declaration of the Word of God about itself. The preacher is a representative of something else. He does not and cannot advocate for himself. He represents the Word of God to the people.
Surely, then, what must matter as much as anything else in preaching is that the purpose of preaching the Word of God is that people might hear the Word of God and not the word of a man. This, then, is the first question that I find to be generally profitable. The question is simple and straightforward: does Scripture mean what that man said it means? It may, and it may not. However, assuming a faithful preacher, the sermon will generally reflect and represent the text. When that is the case, it is good for students to see that. It helps them learn to read the Bible for themselves and not to settle for someone else telling them what it means. It helps them to keep their focus on God’s Word and not on the particular techniques or mannerisms of the preacher. And it helps them to be exposed to the unmediated and undiluted Word in their own hearts so that the exposure to the Word is as direct as possible.
Get Beyond the Preacher
How does the question work? It prompts the students to go back to the text, to look at their notes, and to consider their memory. In this way, all their mind is engaged in processing and analyzing what they heard. It is not about how they felt or what impressions they got. The question directs their minds to consider what the Word of God says. It is hard to imagine a better kind of question.
This is important because students tend to grow up in church hearing over and over again that they must listen to the teacher. But by the time they become teenagers, it is high time to begin to learn not to listen to certain people. Not every Bible teacher is a teacher of the Bible. The goal is not to teach students to submit without question to their teachers. Students who do not have questions are students who do not think. Questions motivate and fuel thinking, and thinking is what we want them to do.
How can students tell whether the preacher stuck to the text? The students should be able to trace a line from the main argument the preacher made to the flow of thought in Scripture. This is not as easy as it sounds. Preparing and delivering sermons is a complex process. So is listening well to one.
We want the students to know that a preacher is not right in his interpretation merely because he claims to be. Sometimes, preachers today do not even claim to be right. They fail to make much of any claim at all. The students need to learn to catch this. We should all be critical listeners. However, this criticism should be far less focused on the preacher’s fashion choices or personal delivery and more focused on the content of his message. We want students to learn the difference between a faithful message preached unskillfully and an unfaithful message preached skillfully. We live in a time where the latter is perhaps more common.
Leaders should consider asking students whether the point of the sermon is faithful to what the text says. In my context, the question has typically revealed one thing, namely, that the students are not in the habit of critiquing the sermon in this way. It is a strange thing. It appears to be the case that students are not thinking about potential alternatives to interpret the text. It may also be the case that the preaching they hear fails to make a clear claim about the text in question. If the latter is the case, then it will be difficult for students to answer. And if that is the reason it is difficult for students to answer, then it must be the case that the most the students could come away with from the sermon is some application points that are necessarily divorced from the text itself. Is that what we want?
Conclusion
Preachers need to make clear claims about the text they are preaching. This is rarer than might be expected. And listeners need to listen for clear claims. Otherwise, what are we supposed to talk about in small group, our impressions of the sermon? My personal feelings about the sermon matter, but they are also beside the point. My feelings may be misguided, but the text just preached is true, and the sermon that preached it should also be true. Therefore, I should come to the text from whatever emotional place I am. I must bend to the truth and be shaped by it. I cannot expect the truth to bend to me and be shaped by my feelings. The questions that leaders ask their small groups should reflect that priority.