Proclaimer Blog
Don’t be distracted by the famous texts
We're not agin preaching texts. In fact, this last Sunday (Reformation Sunday, in our church at least) I preached Romans 3.22. "Good, good" said the wise sage Dick when I told him. Preaching texts is hard work though in terms of making sure you don't rip them out of context and understand them as they're meant to be understood – a harder task than many preachers think.
But the flip side of this is that when you're preaching a book you will come across famous texts. This Sunday last in the evening I was preaching from 2 Corinthians 5.11-6.2 in our series on "the gospel centred church." It contains at least three famous texts:
“one has died for all, therefore all died.” (v15)
“if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”(v17)
“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (v22)
The truth is that anyone of those would (or, better, could) make an excellent sermon in itself. But when preaching the passage, it's easy to be distracted by these great texts. Some of the folk probably had them as memory verses when they were younger or on posters on the wall (if they were particularly keen). The answer is, I think, to keep working at how they function within the passage. Acknowledge they are well known and, without denigrating those who hold onto such texts for comfort and help, warmly show how they fit in the passage.
It's not easy, actually. Someone will always feel you have not done it justice. Someone else will feel you have overdone it. But all Scripture is God-breathed and so securing them in a passage is well worth the effort. For what it's worth (which is probably not very much) my outline was:
Gospel message (2 Cor 5.11-6.2)
- The gospel enables us think rightly about ourselves (11-15)
- The gospel enables us to think rightly about others (16-17)
- The gospel enables us to think rightly about the task (5.18-6.2)