Sermon Tone Analysis

Grasping God’s Word, by Scott Duvall and Daniel Hays

Duvall, J. Scott, and J. Daniel Hays.

Grasping God’s Word: A Hands-On Approach to Reading, Interpreting, and Applying the Bible.

Third Edition.

Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2012.

Step 2: Measuring the width of the river to cross.

Start by observing differences between your own context and the context of the original audience.

Question: What are the differences between the biblical audience and us?

As mentioned above, the Christian today is separated from the biblical audience by differences in culture, language, situation, time, and often covenant.

These differences form a river that hinders us from moving straight from meaning in their context to meaning in ours.

The width of the river, however, varies from passage to passage.

Sometimes it is extremely wide, requiring a long, substantial bridge for crossing.

Other times, however, it is a narrow creek that we can easily hop over.

It is obviously important to know just how wide the river is before we start trying to construct a principlizing bridge across it.

Historical/Cultural Context:

Location

Time

Culture

Language

In this step, commentaries, encyclopedias, and study Bibles can be particularly helpful.

Biblical Context:

Old or New Testament?

Occasion of the text?

Next, observe the similarities between your own context and the context of the original audience.

The corrupted state of our world and our being cries for God’s aid.

He responds with the truths of Scripture that give us hope through facets of his grace that bear on aspects of our fallen condition revealed in every portion of his Word.

No text was written merely for those in the past.

No text was written merely for information.

God intends for each passage to give us the “endurance” and the “encouragement” we need today (cf. 1 Cor.

10:13).

Preaching that is true to these purposes (1) focuses on the fallen condition that necessitated the writing of the passage and (2) uses the text’s features to explain how the Holy Spirit addresses that concern then and now.

The Fallen Condition Focus (FCF) is the mutual human condition that contemporary persons share with those to or about whom the text was written that requires the grace of the passage for God’s people to glorify and enjoy him.

What fallen condition(s) in the original audience necessitated this text?

Why was it written?

What problem does it address?

Example from I Corinthians 15:1-11:

The primary FCF for 1 Cor.

15:1-11 is found in v. 12 (This is why we pay attention to the CONTEXT of a passage!!!)

Apparently, some of the Corinthians were spreading heretical teaching that there is no resurrection from the dead.

Problem/Occasion: Some at the Corinthian church were challenging the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead.

Paul takes the time to give a detailed account of the gospel in order to show that this false teaching directly contradicts an important aspect of the gospel—namely, that it is rooted in actual, historical events.

A challenge to the historical events of the gospel (i.e., resurrection) is a challenge to the gospel itself.

Purpose: To assert correct doctrine/rebuke heresy and remind them of the gospel because they tended to forget its implications for their lives

Are there differences between us and the original audience?

We probably don’t have people in our church that are actually spreading heresy that there is no bodily resurrection.

Do we have a similar problem today?

Like the Corinthians, we need the gospel!

Like the Corinthians, we face similar challenges to the gospel today from liberal theologians and heretics.

The “moral example” theory of the atonement

Antisupernaturalism—denials of the historicity of Jesus’ miracles and/or resurrection

“Disembodied Spirit floating around in heaven for eternity” theory

A. Greek and Biblical Views The question of human immortality inevitably involves a comparison of biblical and Greek views of the subject.

The Greek view, expounded classically in Plato’s Phaedo, is based on an anthropological dualism of body and soul.

The body is gross, corruptible, subject to illusion.

The soul, on the other hand, is immortal, eternal, essentially divine, and in a sense infallible, belonging properly to the realm of the ideal.

In this life the soul is imprisoned in the body, which easily tyrannizes over the soul.

Hence life ought to be a process of liberation, the weaning of the soul away from alien matter through engagement with the eternal ideas that lie behind material things.

Death is the culmination of the process, the final liberation of the soul from the body, and thus is a friend and not an enemy; through death the soul is released from the prison of the body to its true home.

This view is noble, full of apparent light, answers to an important dimension of human experience (the sense of alienation), and is attractive.

It has influenced both Hellenistic Judaism and the history of Christian thought.

Indeed, the salvation of the “immortal soul” has sometimes been a commonplace in preaching, but it is fundamentally unbiblical.

Biblical anthropology is not dualistic but monistic: human being consists in the integrated wholeness of body and soul, and the Bible never contemplates the disembodied existence of the soul in bliss.

Death is the enemy of this integrity and not the friend of the soul.

Immortality, in Greek thought, is of the nature of the soul, which is essentially unaffected by death except insofar as it is liberated.

This involves no conflict, but rather is a peaceful escape from creation.

Biblical immortality, on the contrary, is an end which is achieved through a dramatic conflict with death and involves a new creation in which the integrity of body and soul is restored and perfected.

We often talk about heaven as if we will wander around in heaven as a disembodied spirit for eternity

But Scripture teaches that our physical bodies will be resurrected and restored and Heaven and Earth recreated.

We will spend eternity with an actual, physical body on an actual, physical Earth.

(See Rev. 19)

Helpful Bible Study Aids (handout)

Study Bibles:

ESV Study Bible

Apologetics Study Bible

Archaeological Study Bible

KJV Open Bible

Faithlife Study Bible

Other translations: KJV, NKJV, NIV, ESV, HCSB, NASB etc.

Encyclopedias, Dictionaries, and Atlases:

Holman Bible Atlas

Holman or Baker Illustrated Bible Dictionary

Commentaries:

NIV Application Commentary (Series)

ESV Expository Commentary (Series)

Word Biblical Commentary (Series)

Calvin’s Commentaries (free at biblehub.com)

Apps and Internet Resources:

Blue Letter Bible

Logos Bible Software

Glo BibleDesiringGod.org

thegospelcoalition.org

netbible.org

Books/Other:

Perspectives Series (for difficult/controversial theological issues)

Systematic Theology, by Wayne Grudem

Ancient Texts

The Apocrypha

Josephus (a first century Jewish historian)

Early Church Fathers (Eusebius, Ireneaus, Polycarp, Athanasius, etc.)

Use with Discretion (or avoid entirely):

Paraphrase Bibles and Dynamic Equivalence Translations