When people attend church, they may respond to the preacher like a novice at the opera. They have never been told what a sermon is supposed to do. Commonly many listeners react to the emotional highs. They enjoy the human interest stories, jot down a catchy sentence or two, and judge the sermon a success if the preacher quits on time. Important matters, such as the subject of the sermon, may escape them completely.
Judging from the uncomprehending way in which listeners talk about a sermon, it is hard to believe that they have listened to a message. Instead the responses indicate that they leave with a basketful of fragments but no adequate sense of the whole. Unfortunately some of us preach as we have listened. Preachers, like their audiences, may conceive of sermons as a collection of points that have little relationship to each other.
Ideally each sermon is the explanation, interpretation, or application of a single dominant idea supported by other ideas, all drawn from one passage or several passages of Scripture.
THE IMPORTANCE OF A SINGLE IDEA#
An effective speech “centers on one specific thing, a central idea.” To ignore the principle that a central, unifying idea must be at the heart of an effective sermon is to push aside what experts in both communication theory and preaching have to tell us.
If we preach effectively, we must know what we are about. Effective sermons major in biblical ideas brought together into an overarching unity. Having thought God’s thoughts after Him, the expositor communicates and applies those thoughts to the hearers. In dependence upon the Holy Spirit, the preacher aims to confront, convict, convert, and comfort men and women through the proclamation of biblical concepts. People shape their lives and settle their eternal destinies in response to ideas.
THE DEFINITION OF AN IDEA#
What do we mean by an idea? The word idea itself moved into English from the Greek word eido, which means “to see” and therefore “to know.” An idea sometimes enables us to see what was previously unclear.
The ability to abstract and synthesize, that is, to think in ideas, develops with maturity. An idea may be considered a distillation of life. It abstracts out of the particulars of life what they have in common and relates them to each other. Through ideas we make sense out of the parts of our experience.
All ideas, of course, are not equally valid; we have good ideas and bad ideas. Bad ideas offer explanations of experience that do not reflect reality.
Ideas sometimes lurk in the attic of our minds like ghosts. At times we struggle to give these wispy ideas a body. “I know what I mean,” we say, “but I just can’t put it into words.” Despite the difficulty of clothing thought with words, we have to do it. Unless ideas are expressed in words, we cannot understand, evaluate, or communicate them. If we will not—or cannot—think ourselves clear so that we say what we mean, we have no business in the pulpit.
THE FORMATION OF AN IDEA#
When reduced to its basic structure, an idea consists of only two essential elements: a subject and a complement. Both are necessary.
When we talk about the subject of an idea, we mean the complete, definite answer to the question, “What am I talking about?” The subject of a sermon idea can never be only one word. A subject cannot stand alone. By itself it is incomplete, and therefore it needs a complement.
The complement “completes” the subject by answering the question, “What am I saying about what I am talking about?” A subject without a complement dangles as an open-ended question. An idea emerges only when the complement is joined to a definite subject.
Moreover, behind every subject there is a question either stated or implied. If I say that my subject is “the importance of faith,” the implied question is, “What is the importance of faith?” “The people that God justifies . . .” forms a subject because it answers the question, “What am I talking about?” But the unstated question is, “Who are the people God justifies?”
Each new complement tells us what is being said about the subject, and each new complement forms a different idea.
We pursue the subject and complement when we study the biblical text. Because each paragraph, section, or subsection of Scripture contains an idea, we do not understand a passage until we can state its subject and complement exactly. While other questions emerge in the struggle to understand the meaning of a biblical writer, the two (“What precisely is the author talking about?” and “What is the author saying about what he is talking about?”) are fundamental.
EXAMPLES OF FORMING AN IDEA#
In some biblical passages the subject and complement may be discovered with relative ease, but in others determining the idea stands as a major challenge.
Psalm 117#
Psalm 117 is an example of an uncomplicated thought. The psalmist urges:
Praise the Lord, all nations!
Extol him, all you people!
For his love is strong,
His faithfulness eternal.We do not understand the psalm until we can state its subject.
What is the psalmist talking about?
We might be tempted to say that the subject is praise, but praise is broad and imprecise. The psalmist isn’t telling us everything about praise. Nor is the subject praise of God, which is still too broad. The subject needs more limits. The precise subject is why everyone should praise the Lord.
What is the psalmist saying about that?
He has two complements to his subject. The Lord should be praised, first, because His love is strong and second, because His faithfulness is eternal. In this short psalm the psalmist states his naked idea, stripped of any development, but in its bare bones it has a definite subject and two complements.
Hebrews 10:19-25#
Longer passages in which the idea receives extensive development can be harder to analyze for subject and complement, but the work must be done. In Hebrews 10:19-25 the author applies a previous discussion of the high-priestly work of Jesus:
Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by the way which he dedicated for us, a new and living way, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh; and having a great [high] priest over the house of God; let us draw near with a true heart in fullness of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience: and having our body washed with pure water, let us hold fast the confession of our hope that it waver not; for he is faithful that promised: and let us consider one another to provoke unto love and good works; not forsaking our own assembling together, as the custom of some is, but exhorting one another; and so much the more, as ye see the day drawing nigh. (ASV)
Until a subject emerges, it is not possible to determine the value or significance of anything else that is said.
A casual reader might be tempted to state the subject as the high priesthood of Jesus, but that subject covers too much. The author of Hebrews does not tell his readers everything about Christ’s high-priestly work in this single paragraph. Nor is the text talking about boldness to enter the holy place, which is actually a sub-idea in the passage.
The subject can always be stated as a question. Therefore, the subject can be narrowed to, “What should happen because believers can enter into God’s presence with confidence and have a great high priest?”
The complements of this subject will be a series of results, and there are three.
First, they should draw near to God with the assurance that comes from a cleansed heart and life
Second, they should hold unswervingly to the hope they profess
Third, they should spur on one another to love and good works. Everything else in this paragraph enlarges on this subject with its complements.
Other examples#
The small diary of Habakkuk consists of a series of conversations that the prophet had with God.
Habakkuk opens with a complaint in 1:2-4. Stated as a subject and complement, this is the idea:
Subject: What is Habakkuk’s lament about the injustice he sees in Judah?
Complement: He wonders why God, who is righteous, doesn’t judge the nation for its sin.
Idea: Habakkuk laments that his righteous God does not punish sin in Judah.
God replies to the prophet in 1:5-7. God’s answer can also be stated as a subject and complement:
Subject: How will God bring judgment on Judah?
Complement: God will use the wicked Babylonians to punish His people.
Idea: God will use the wicked Babylonians to punish His people.
Note that both of these paragraphs (1:2-11) can now be joined in a larger subject and complement:
Subject: How will God punish the evil and injustice rampant in His people, Judah?
Complement: God will use the wicked Babylonians as His whipping stick.
Idea: God will judge the evil in His own people, Judah, through an invasion by the wicked Babylonians.
That leads us, then, to the third paragraph in the passage found in 1:12-2:1:
Subject: How could a righteous God use the evil and godless Babylon to punish a more righteous nation like Judah?
Complement: God will also punish the Babylonians at an appointed time.
Idea: Even though God will use the wicked Babylonians to punish Judah, He will also judge the Babylonians for their sin.
There are many images used in the poetry of this chapter, but they must be separated from the ideas they support. It is important to go through the process of stating the subject and complement to get at the ideas. Ideas are slippery creatures that can easily escape your grasp.
In each of these passages, we determined the subject and its complement(s) to discover the structure of the idea. In order to think clearly, we must constantly distinguish the idea from the way the idea develops. The effort to state the idea of a passage and then to state the idea of our sermon in exact words can be frustrating and irritating, but in the long run it is the most economical use of our time. What is more important, we cannot get anywhere without doing it. We do not understand what we are reading unless we can clearly express the subject and complement of the section we are studying. And those who hear us preach do not understand what we are saying unless they can answer the basic questions: What were we talking about today? What were we saying about what we were talking about?
Thinking is difficult, but it stands as our essential work. Make no mistake about the difficulty of the task. It is often slow, discouraging, overwhelming. But when God calls us to preach, He calls us to love Him with our minds. God deserves that kind of love and so do the people to whom we minister.
SUMMARIZE#
Two essential elements in the statement of an idea: Subject and Complement.
Idea - a distillation of life that abstracts out of the particulars of experience what they have in common and relates them to each other.
Subject - the complete, definite answer to the question, “Whatam I talking about?”
Complement - the answer to the question, “What exactly am I saying about what I’m talking about?”