Homiletics Study Pt 1

Naming the Textual Idea

The first primary goal we want to address is the idea of naming the textual idea.

The central proposition statement of your sermon. Sermon in a tweet.

Naming the textual idea means discovering the writer’s idea in the text and designating it with precise terminology

Inductive Bible Study

Cartoon- What is wrong with this picture?

What is the assumption of this cartoon? The pastor should be looking where to find something to preach? In all those books. Where should we be looking to find something to preach? It must start with the Bible! (other resources are not bad- but it should not be our starting point).

Problem: How do we approach the text? Most people do not have a clearly defined method for approaching a text. What techniques do you use?

What is an inductive study of the text mean?

An inductive study of the text means you come to your passage to examine it as thoroughly as possible in order to understand its meaning.

You are reasoning from the particulars (specific information in and about the text) to the generals (teachings the text reveals). Your goal is to let the text speak.

You must avoid the “sermonizes trap”??? the tendency to look for a sermon instead of examining the details for the meaning of the text. This fallacy usually results in only a surface understanding of the riches of the text.

Deductive Bible Study: bringing your own or other’s ideas to the text in order to find support and verification for them in the text.

Subject: brought by the teacher

Aspects: determined by the teacher

Purpose: confirm the teacher’s ideas

Inductive Bible Study: carefully examining the text for whatever information it contains on the subject it addresses and seeking to discern the universal principles thus revealed.

Subject: revealed by the text itself

Aspects: observed in the text’s idea

Purpose: receive the writer’s teaching

Structural Diagram

A structural diagram is a phrase-by-phrase chart of the text in the exact word order of the translation you use. Its purpose is to show in graphic form the relationship of various ideas in the text.

Completing the Structural Diagram

Key question: What does this phrase tell about in the line above?

Step 1: Write the first independent clause as your starting point.

What is an independent phrase? Expresses a complete thought without the aid of other phrases and contains at lease a subject and verb.

Genesis 1:1 ESV

1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Diagram Example

Step 2: Place supporting phrases, clauses, and words starting directly under the words they relate to.

“What does this phrase relate to?”

Hebrews 4:12 ESV

12 For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

Is piercing the equivalent of living, active, and sharper? Or does piercing relate to or modify sword and thus explain how the Word of God is sharp?

Step 3: Line up any series of equal words, phrases, or parallel thoughts vertically.

Example in a minute.

Step 4: Place connectives in brackets and set apart from the main ideas.

What are connectives? And, but, for, etc.

Step 5: Place parentheses around words italicized in the text and around forms of address.

Why?

Structural Diagram: Heb. 4:12

Hebrews 4:12 ESV

12 For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

Homework

Structural Diagram of your passage

Spend time meditating on your passage