Outlines serve as skeletons of thought, and in most sermons, as in most bodies, the skeleton will not be completely hidden. The most effective means of hiding the bare bones of a sermon is not by disposing of the skeleton but by covering it with flesh. Supporting material is to the outline what skin is to bones or walls are to the frame of a house.
Stage 9: Fill in the outline with supporting materials that explain, prove, apply, or amplify the points.#
An audience does not respond to abstract ideas, nor have many people ever been moved to faith by reading an outline of Romans. If an outline remains undeveloped, therefore, an audience can miss its meaning and remain unconvinced. To amplify, explain, prove, or apply your ideas and make them understandable and appealing, you use a variety of supporting materials.
RESTATEMENT#
We have already talked about restatement during our discussion of transitions. Restatement, saying the same thing in different words, is used in other places in your sermon. Restatement serves at least two purposes.
First, it helps you make a concept clear.#
Listeners, unlike readers, must get what you say when you say it. A reader who is confused by what she is reading can flip back a few pages and pick up the author’s flow of thought. But listeners have no such option. If at first they don’t understand you, then unless you say it again in other words, the listener is lost.
Restatement differs from repetition. Repetition says the same thing in the same words; restatement says the same thing in different words. Repetition may profitably be used throughout the sermon like a refrain to reinforce a major idea, but the skillful preacher learns to restate a point several times in different ways.
Listeners may not get the meaning of your point when you say it for the first time, but when you restate it in different words, that can cause them to say, “Oh, I see what you mean.”
Second, it also impresses an idea on the listener’s mind.#
If you say something once, it can be ignored, but if you repeat it several times, it will influence a hearer’s thoughts and feelings. Advertisers invest millions of dollars to restate their ideas on radio, on television, and in magazines. You need to develop that skill as well.
DEFINITION AND EXPLANATION#
A definition establishes limits. It sets down what must be included and excluded by a term or statement. When we think of definitions, we usually think of dictionaries where we find terse, quick explanations of a word.
Explanation, like definition, also sets boundaries, but it may do so by amplifying on how ideas relate to one another or what an idea implies.
Definitions and explanations work in a variety of ways. We usually define a term or idea by placing it in a broad class of things of which it is a part. At the same time, however, we must show how it differs from other things in that class. Classification, therefore, explains both similarities and differences.
Sometimes we define and explain through synonyms. A synonym works, however, only if it touches listeners’ previous experience and makes them understand and feel the meaning intended.
Comparison and contrast also help us develop and explain ideas. Illustrations, too, help us to explain.
Explanation proves to be more difficult if you do not know your audience. The more familiar you are with a subject, the less aware you may be of a congregation’s ignorance of it. Most people in the pews live in a different intellectual world from yours. You owe them a clear explanation of exactly what you mean. It is obvious that we should not use jargon or language that is unnecessarily abstract. If you must use theological language, you should define every important term in language the audience understands. Certainly it is better to define too many terms than too few.
FACTUAL INFORMATION#
Facts consist of observations, examples, statistics, and other data that may be verified apart from the speaker. In the expository sermon, observations about the content of a passage are factual because hearers can see for themselves what the Bible says.
Facts, of course, are stupid things until they are brought into relationship with each other and conclusions are drawn from them. Opinions, on the other hand, are just as stupid unless they are built on facts. The expositor, like any ethical speaker, needs to know the facts and be sure of their validity. Facts not only help the listener understand, but when used correctly, they secure respect for the speaker.
Statistics are a special form of facts that enable us to survey a large amount of territory very quickly. They are particularly appealing to citizens in a numbers-conscious society. This allegiance to numbers has created its own pitfalls for the innocent—and opportunities for the dishonest. An air of certainty hangs over the decimal point or the fractionalized percentage, even where measurement is unknowable or absurd. One evangelist reported, “I read not long ago that 50 percent of heavy-metal groups practice devil worship and witchcraft, and I believe the figure is rising each day.” Who counted? Who was counted? When? Where?
When statistics do enter a sermon, they should be as simple as possible without sacrificing accuracy. Round numbers are usually sufficient. As we work with statistics, data can be made meaningful and vivid by comparing them to things within the experience of the audience. In describing the temple of Diana in Ephesus, we might say, “It was 180 feet wide, over 375 feet long, with columns that towered 60 feet in height,” and then add, “That temple was wider and longer than a football field including the end zones, and the columns were taller than a five-story building.”
QUOTATIONS#
We introduce quotations to support or expand a point for two reasons: impressiveness and authority. When we discover that someone else has stated the idea more effectively than we can, we use the other person’s words.
Anchoring a point with some wording that digs into the mind is probably the major reason preachers turn to quotations in sermons. When we give credit for that kind of quote, we do so primarily for ethical reasons.
We also include quotations to gain authority. In this case, when we give credit for what we quote, we do so because the person who said it is in a better position to speak than we are.
We also quote others because they are in a better position to know the facts or interpret them or because the audience would be more likely to accept their evaluation. Who says something makes a difference. Quoting a fundamentalist preacher on the importance of proclaiming God’s judgment resembles quoting a Muslim on the virtues of the Koran.
Authorities must carry credentials. Several questions should be asked about experts to establish competence:
Does experience or training qualify them to speak with authority on this subject?
Is the testimony based on firsthand knowledge?
Is the authority prejudiced? Prejudiced authorities do not inspire trust because they will tend to look with favor on evidence supporting their opinions and to overlook the rest. Prejudiced authorities speaking against their bias can, of course, make an excellent witness. An agnostic or atheist speaking on behalf of Christianity would be strong support because he is expected to speak against it.
How does the audience regard the testimony? Do they know the witness? Do they respect her? When an obscure individual is used as an authority, we should tell the audience what qualifies that person to speak to the issue.
Quotes should be used sparingly. Sermons ought not sound like term papers. As a general rule, quotes should be brief. Long quotations often become unclear and hinder communication. Sometimes a longer quote may be paraphrased and then a few important sentences from the quotation read directly to the audience.
NARRATION#
Narration within a sermon describes the individuals and events embedded in biblical accounts. Every passage has its people—sometimes they stand out in the open laughing, cursing, plotting or praying, and at other times they play hide-and-seek and we must look for them. In every text, though, there is always somebody writing and somebody reading. Pull aside a doctrine and you’ll find personalities. For example, grace does not exist in cold storage in heaven. There is only someone giving grace and another receiving it.
You can use narration in a sermon to supply background by filling in the history, setting, or the actions and spotlighting the personalities involved.
Narration takes on energy when your verbs and nouns paint pictures on your listeners’ minds. A different viewpoint often brings freshness to an oft-told account. How did the woman taken in adultery or the woman at the well think of Jesus when they first met Him? In the epistles, Paul pictures an objector jumping up to argue with him: “What advantage . . . is there in being a Jew?” (Rom. 3:1 NIV), someone asks. “Food for the stomach and the stomach for food” (1 Cor. 6:13 NIV), argues a hedonist of the time. What were they like? Can you describe how they might have carried on the discussion?
Use dialogue. The Gospel narratives and the parables are filled with it. Put words into people’s mouths. When only one person appears, use soliloquy or “self-talk.”
Narration means communicating with imagination, and imagination reflects the insights of faith. Imagination is half brother to interpretation because both relate to the text. In interpretation, we determine what the passage means from what the passage says. In the same way, imagination goes one step beyond the biblical facts and yet stays tied to them.
ILLUSTRATION#
Theologians, for example, may speak about hamartiology instead of sin because the abstract word serves as a better umbrella for the varied aspects of the topic. When theologians address an audience less familiar with their discipline, though, they must step down from their abstraction and talk about murder, lying, stealing, or adultery. If they cannot or will not do this, though they may get high marks as scholars, they fail as communicators.
Skilled preachers deal in high and low levels of abstraction, climbing back and forth like laborers on a ladder. To have meaning, particulars must be gathered up in generalizations, and abstractions must be taken down to particulars to be made understandable.
One means of bringing your sermons down to life lies in the use of illustrations. Well-chosen, skillfully used illustrations can do just about everything—restate, explain, validate, or apply ideas by relating them to tangible experiences. To fix a truth firmly onto the hearer’s mind requires that we state it and state it again. While most restatement comes through the repetition of propositional statements, illustrations can present the truth still another time without wearying the listeners. Understanding, too, may be gained through analogies and anecdotes. An illustration, like the picture on television, makes clear what the speaker explains.
Illustrations also make truth believable. Logically, of course, examples cannot stand as proof, but psychologically they work with argument to gain acceptance. If you wanted to argue that all truth is equally valid but not equally valuable, you might use an analogy to get your audience to accept what you are saying. A penny and a dollar bill are both genuine, you may point out, but they are not of equal worth. Therefore we must distinguish between penny- and dollar-truth. The analogy wins as much agreement as the reasoned argument.
Illustrations also apply your ideas to people’s experience. Your listeners need not only to understand a biblical concept, but they also need to know what difference it makes.
People today need applications that show them “how to do it,” and they need plenty of them. The seasoned faithful need help. What about those souls who may be the product of dysfunctional families or who have bypassed the church on their way to growing up and come into faith out of cold secularism? They often lack the skills needed for living a life of faith. They need us to draw them a picture.
It takes effort to think of ways a great truth may be applied to life. Sometimes you have an illustration from your life and ministry. At other times you can imagine a situation that someone in your audience might go through where a biblical insight might be used. Be as specific as possible.
Illustrations serve you and your congregation in other ways. They aid memory, stir emotion, create need, hold attention, and establish rapport between speaker and hearer
The foundational principle for the use of illustrations is that illustrations should illustrate.#
An illustration should illustrate something. Therefore, there is no such thing as “a good illustration,” but only a good illustration of a particular truth. According to its etymology, to illustrate means “to throw light on a subject.” Illustrations resemble a row of foot-lights that illuminate the actors and actresses on the stage.
Illustrations should also be understandable. Through examples, we clarify the unknown with the known. If you need to explain an illustration to make it clear, you should not use it. To explain an illustration which, in turn, explains a concept is to use the unfamiliar to illustrate the unfamiliar. Examples taken from the Bible sometimes violate this rule because we illustrate the unknown with the unknown. Because you want to illuminate the unknown by the use of the known, your most effective illustrations will touch as close to the lives of your listeners as possible. Human interest stories have great power because they deal with subjects out of our common experiences, such as children, animals, and comic strip characters.
Some illustrations are more effective than others. Effective communication is more like a handshake than an E-mail message. It is something we experience as well as hear. The best illustrations not only appeal to people’s minds, but also touch their emotions. The strongest examples flow out of our lives into the listeners’ lives.
The most powerful illustrations are those where your personal experience overlaps your listener’s personal experience.
The second-best illustrations are those where your learned experience overlaps your listener’s learned experience. When possible, we want to talk into our audience’s lived experiences.
The third-best illustrations come out of the speaker’s direct experience and overlap the listener’s vicarious experience.
The fourth and least effective illustrations speak from the speaker’s learned experience into the audience’s learned experience.
The fifth level of illustration is stories that do nothing in the hearer. They fall completely outside the listener’s awareness.
Jay Adams adds an additional warning about biblical illustrations: they are often not biblical. “Always use the Bible authoritatively; never illustratively. Scripture was not given to illustrate points; it was written to make points. If you don’t pay attention to this warning, the first thing you know, you will find yourself making points you want to make and using (misusing) the Bible to illustrate and back up your ideas.”
Illustrations should also be convincing. As much as lies in you, be sure of your facts. Although a factually inaccurate story might illustrate your idea, if you use it with an audience aware of the error, you will undermine your credibility. What is more, illustrations ought not offend the good sense of an audience. Truth may be stranger than fiction, but improbable anecdotes leave your audience to suspect that you are strange. The gospel sits in judgment on the methods used to proclaim it, and ultimately God’s truth cannot be benefited by our falsehoods. If a congregation suspects that we will lie to make a point, they have good reason to believe that we will also lie to make a convert.
Your illustrations should be appropriate to the theme of your sermon and to your audience. Great truth can be trivialized by your illustrations. Some illustrations, acceptable to one audience, might not be appropriate for another.
Where do you find them? Good illustrations can be found everywhere. Start with your personal experience. Every life is a circus. Some people can find more illustrations in a stroll around the neighborhood than others can find in a trip around the world. The difference lies not in what we experience but in what we see in our experience. You must observe in order to see. The world can be God’s picture book if in ordinary events you see analogies, applications, or spiritual truth.
Personal illustrations add warmth and vitality to a sermon, but to use them effectively, keep three general rules in mind.
First, as we’ve already said, the illustration should be true. Don’t say something happened to you if it didn’t.
Second, the illustration should be modest.
The third rule that must be scrupulously observed when using personal illustrations is that you must not violate a confidence.
Of course, many illustrations will occur to you as you work on your sermon. Write down clearly the point you want to make, and then think of the parts of that point that require illumination. You must know exactly what you want to illustrate if you expect your mind and memory to supply what you need. Your ability to fashion appropriate analogies and apt applications will be sharpened through practice.
Undoubtedly, the place to which you will turn most often for supporting material is your illustration file. Of course, what you get out of your file for a given sermon depends entirely on what you have put into it. There are many systems on the market developed to enable ministers to save the results of their study and reading.