Book of the Week 14

After the somewhat lighter fare of last week, this week it has been back to solid food and I have greatly enjoyed and benefited from Derek Newton’s cleverly titled ‘And the Word became….a Sermon’. Derek, a lecturer at the International Christian College in Glasgow, has a wealth of preaching experience and served with OMF International in East Asia for more than 20 years, part of which was spent in theological education. The material for the book is teaching material he has used and enormously helpful as he leads you carefully from text to sermon.

He begins with a warning against some all too common but unhelpful styles of preaching which he labels the hobby horse, the rocket, the heart on the sleeve, the skyscraper and the grasshopper. I’ll leave you to read the definitions but you won’t have to think too hard to recall real-life examples.

There then follows two chapters in which he lays the Old Testament and New Testament foundations for expository preaching. Probably my only criticism of this book lies here, and this book is not alone in this. I don’t disagree with anything Newton says in these pages - he stresses the importance of the message of God’s Word in the lives of God’s people and the need for it to be heard by unbelievers and he demonstrates great confidence in the power of the Word of God. My slight complaint is that I was unconvinced that it was always, in a biblical context, actually an affirmation of expository preaching as such.

After chapters on the need for holiness in the life of the preacher and the nature of biblical expository preaching, comes the real meat of this book - the ten practical steps to get a sermon from your chosen text.

1. Reading and thinking
2. The themes of the passage
3. The contexts of the passage
4. Contents analysis
5. Issue of application to life
6. Method and outline
7. Write out the body of the sermon
8. Insert Illustrations
9. Prepare the introduction
10. Prepare the conclusion

And the emphasis is on the practical. Newton guides you step by step, sharing his thinking and reasoning and you feel you’re standing looking over his shoulder as he works on his own sermon preparation. Each small step is helpfully illustrated from specific texts and Bible passages and, perhaps most helpfully of all, he bases his whole material on an exegesis of Luke 4:1-3 - constructing his material for this passage as he progresses through the ten steps and, at the end of the book, culminating with a completed sermon outline with its main points and illustrations.

There is a final, really great chapter at the end of the book reminding the reader of the purpose, power and privilege of preaching.

This is a carefully researched and written book, emanating from years of practice and experience and it will provide a rich mine of resources and help for preachers, experienced and novice alike.

If you want to buy a copy click on the book cover - or indeed any of the books I review on this site - and it will take you straight to my own Amazon aStore.