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Preaching Lecture Part 4 By Jay Adams

Nevertheless, it seems to me that a conclusion is warranted to a message.
Even if you've been saying many, many different things, you certainly need at least to sum them up and powerfully state them at the end so that people can carry them with them in some form.
A great chef was once interviewed, and he was asked,
what do you always, what are you always sure about in your meals?
He said, well, he said, I might skimp on anything else during the meal.
But one thing I'll never skimp on, that's the coffee, because that's the United States.
But that's the coffee, I said, because I'll buy the finest coffee I can find because I watch people, and when they eat, they save that last sip of coffee for the very end of their meal. That's the taste they leave with. I think in a sense we ought to think about our preaching as a meal. There's the appetizer, that maybe that's even a more delightful kind of way of
thinking about an itching counter at the beginning, but at least the appetizer that gets people interested. Then there's the main course. Then there's the dessert at the end with the coffee at the very conclusion of it all. And we've got to be very careful too if we're thinking in these images about what goes in between, about which I was talking largely this morning, the body of the message, but this time let me say a word about content and what needs to be done with that content. I know pastors and preachers who say, I want my people to have meat. I don't want them to have some kind of curd or some kind of half watered down sort of thing. I want meat for my people. And that's good. People need meat. And Christians need to grow on solid food once they're past the stage where they have to take milk. And they were condemned for never growing
in Hebrews 5 and only continuing on milk when they should have been long past that stage.
But in order to give people meat they have to be able to get it in a form that they can
digest it. Many pastors spend all week long shopping all over the exegetical places in town
where they can finally find the choicest chunk or cut of meat in town. And they carve out that
piece of meat and they bring it out. And on Sunday they have the finest pasta in town,
but they slap it down on somebody's plate in front of them as if they were feeding tigers.
It's bloody and raw and uncooked and unseasoned. And they expect people to eat that meat that way.
It won't happen. And then they go around wondering, I had the best meat of anybody in town,
the soundest doctrine, the best exegesis, everything wonderful. Man, I am a hermeneutical
genius. And they expect people to eat raw meat. They can't do it. You've got to season it. You've
got to cook it. You've got to make it palatable. And then people will eat. You should serve the
word of God by candlelight on fine china. And you should do it with the finest and wonderful,
most wonderful way that you know how. You need to work that. You need to work that.
And that means we've got to really work at conclusions, work at introductions,
and work at the way that we present the message in between.
I haven't time to talk about that sermon in Acts 2 or any of the other sermons in the book of Acts.
I have a whole series on preaching the book of Acts that we teach during this course.
But one of the interesting things is that the Spirit of God was the one who produced those
sermons. In Acts 2, 4, and 14, and one other place, 26, where Paul's sermons mention a word,
an interesting word occurs, apothengomai. Apothengomai. It means, and it's nowhere
else in the Bible, it means to speak revelatory words under inspiration. Those sermons were not
Peter's sermons and Paul's sermons only. They were the response to that promise. They were
the answer of that promise that Jesus gave when he said, don't take thought about what you're
going to say ahead of time, because I'll be with you and I'll enable you to speak what and how.
And he did. And here were these raw fishermen speaking the Word of God with power and beauty
and effectiveness laid out in ways that they couldn't possibly have put together on their own.
So when you study the book of Acts, one of the interesting things that you're going to be looking
at is how the Holy Spirit thought preaching should be done. That's one of the interesting things you
find in the book of Acts. And so we ought really to go there rather than to the classical
rhetoricians, if it seemed to me, if this is the kind of thing that the Holy Spirit wants to do.
Now when you look at those sermons, there was finesse. There was finesse. They were not just
good in the sense of agaphos, they were good in the sense of kalas. They were fine messages.
They were well done. The introductions were good. The content was in order and the proper order for
reaching people. The conclusions were powerful if they ever got to a conclusion. Most of the time
they were cut off before they ever got to one like Jesus was when they tried to throw him over the
hill. In Luke 4 you read about that sermon of his that led to that powerful response. These sermons
were not just thrown together homily. In fact, you don't find a single homily anywhere in the
New Testament. So I'm suggesting that we should take the time and do the job well.
Just a couple more things quickly now, just getting to one thing after another, a little
bit disjointed because there's no time to do the job well, but I still want to say a word or two
about them. Let's talk about stories, illustrations. Jesus used many of them. Powerful preachers
always have. Children love stories. Children from 9 to 99 love stories.
He has to go see someone in the hospital. He's not running out.
Children love stories and everybody loves stories. The preacher's groaning along
and heads are going this way and people look at their watches and
the army and so on. Boy, I feel natural after 20 hours away.
And all of a sudden the preacher says, and now let me tell you about when I was in the army.
Heads go boing all over the congregation. Little ones, big ones, little-sized people,
all kinds of heads come popping up because a story is forthcoming. Why use stories?
Well, because of so many different reasons. First of all, stories make truth concrete.
We can see how the actual, the principle actually plays out in a person's life.
We can see it in someone who has experienced it. Often a story will do that for you.
Stories make things memorable, make them memorable. Who, after hearing the story of a
man on the road going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, could ever forget the story?
You just can't forget it. Hear it once and you've got it.
So stories becoming memorable bring the truth that's attached to them back to us again and
again as we think of a story or hear something that reminds us of it.
So stories do many things for us. I just mentioned a couple. But how do you tell a good story?
A lot of people say, I can't tell a story. I'm not good at storytelling. Every preacher needs to
become adept at storytelling. It's very important for him to do so.
I want to give you the basic format for a story. It runs something like this.
I put this in one of my books and lovely, lovely publishers always destroy what you try to do.
I had this way down here, but they put it up here on the same line because they thought they were
straightening out my poor drawing, you see. But that was intended that this be much further down.
You'll understand why in a minute or two. But at any rate, a story begins with background.
Background. A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho. Nothing all that dramatic about that.
People went down from Jerusalem to Jericho every day. Lots of other people would in the future.
It's just the fact that sets the scene for them. Man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho.
Suddenly something begins to happen. A complication or a problem,
whichever you want to call it, arises. He's going down from Jerusalem to Jericho.
He fell among the feet, and they beat him, and they robbed him, and they left him half dead.
All right, now we've got a little bit of tension in this situation.
A problem or a complication arises. Now we build suspense
in this story as the Lord begins to tell us. Here comes a priest. Here comes a Levite.
Wow, these men are going to help. They don't. They don't.
Here's a guy bleeding, bleeding half dead on the roof. These people aren't helping him.
Here comes a Samaritan. If he's got a shoe left, he'll take care of it. He'll steal that.
Samaritans hate the Jews. The Jews hate the Samaritans. And this is getting really serious
for this guy. And so he begins. But suddenly, an amazing thing happens. The Samaritan doesn't
rob him. He helps him. He puts him on his donkey. He pours oil in his wounds. He binds him. He takes
him to the inn and so on and so forth. And so we've reached the climax or the solution to the problem.
And then you have a conclusion, which has to be very brief in the story. After the point's
been made, you don't redo it. Sometimes you can stop the whole thing right here and not even come
to the conclusion. But the conclusion is, go thou and do likewise. Go thou and do likewise.
Very simple. Very powerful. Now, those are the basic elements in any good story.
You can turn them around, you know, have foreshadowing and foreshortening and anticipation
and flashbacks and all kinds of things you want to do. But basically, you're working out of this
outline. That's the way all the good stories in the Bible, all the good stories anywhere in the
world have ever been. It's that way. And you can develop a story according to that outline.
Now, the important thing is that along with the story, that the delivery grow out of
and approximate the content of the story, as well as the rest of the sermon, of course,
at every point. And so the delivery ought to come along with it. That's why
it's important for this to be low. You see, the delivery ought to approximate things at each point
because here is the interest level of the people at the time when you begin.
And the interest level will grow as you tell the story effectively, but it will be lower at the end.
That's why you've got to get off of that conclusion fast. Then it will be at the beginning.
You see, if you have a long conclusion there, it's like telling a joke, getting to the punchline.
Everybody gets a joke and then you sit around and explain the punchline to them. That's terrible.
Now, let's take this delivery. Delivery means use of voice and body. A lot of people don't
get that too straight. It means the use of voice and body, delivery. Now, you start off here.
He also told me he was going to leave. Anybody else, however, after this who leaves, I know that
you have a different reason. Those are the only two that have told me before him.
Now, you start off with a delivery in which there's no tension or should be no tension in your body.
A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, you know. Nothing strange about that. Some people,
however, take the content and cram it into their own delivery so that it becomes, it's shoved
through the grid of their personality and their delivery and it comes out hamburger instead of steak.
They say, a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho. Also, theatrical stuff. I mean,
you know, why get all excited about that? There's no tension involved. There's no complication.
Yeah, you know, a man going down to Jerusalem to Jericho. So what? At this point, so what?
Then he fell on one's feet. Now, tension begins. And the tension should grow
as the suspense grows. And then it should reach the climax. And when it reaches the climax,
then there's a release of tension. People understand the point of the story.
And the body ought to be so affected by the story itself as it's being told that the body
automatically responds at each point to what's being said without having to think even twice
about what you're going to do with your body in gestures or in voice or pitch of your voice
or whatever it may be. You see, you don't write little notes, raise voice to a higher pitch here
on the side of your manuscript or your outline or whatever you're using.
This automatically happens when you feel the tension in your body
of that story as you're speaking. See, your vocal folds are like, actually look more like lips,
but let's just think of them as strings on a violin. When you tighten up on the string
on the violin and pluck it, the pitch rises as you tighten. And as you loosen that tension,
it goes down. The pitch lowers. And that's what naturally happens to your voice. It naturally
rises when there's tension because there are muscles at the beginning and at the end of these
two vocal folds that pull them tight or that relax them according to the general tension
of your body. So you don't have to think raise pitch here, lower pitch there. It just happens
if you are actually experiencing the story yourself as you're telling it. When you're
telling a story, you ought to feel what you're talking about in your body. And if you feel it,
all these things just naturally happen the right way.
Now, it's these unnatural deliveries that get into the way. For example, somebody, maybe mommy,
said to her son when he was going off to his first pastor, always smile. Always smile when you're
going to go to the pulpit. People will think you're pleasant if you smile all the time in
the pulpit. So he gets up and he says, today I'm going to talk about hell.
Smiles at everyone. Horrible, terrible stuff. Then you get these sing-song preachers.
I don't know why the ya is always there, but it always seems, I don't know whether you have
any of those kind in Australia. We have them all over the radio in the United States. I never
got to hear one, but I hear them on the radio turning the dial now and then. And this kind of
thing that people get into where content is just crammed into somebody's habitual way of speaking
in the pulpit, rather than allowing the content to control you at all points in your body.
See, if you're telling a story, let's say you're telling a story about a
trip in the Blue Mountains where you were doing some camping last summer, and you're in a tent,
and you're asleep up there somewhere outside of Katoomba or someplace. You're asleep in this
tent. In the middle of the night at two o'clock in the morning, you're awake. You're here on the
side of the tent. You're listening. Just wake up, Bill. Bill, do you hear that? Do you hear that?
No, Bill, listen. It's just the little tree limb scraping the edge of the tent. No, Bill,
it's claws on the tent. Well, you ought to feel that. There ought to be a chill runs up your
spine as you're talking about. You've got to feel it in your body. You see, that's the way to tell
a story. Now, there are other factors involved in telling a story. One of the big factors is dialogue.
That brings people right into the story itself. That brings the story up to the present time.
Instead of reporting it, there was a time when I had an experience in a tent in which I was
scared to death. You tell the experience, and you tell it in dialogue as if it's happening right
then and there. Bill, wake up. Listen. And when you really get a depth at telling stories,
and you're really freed up in the pulpit, you'll begin to use non-dictionary sounds like
non-dictionary sounds as the telltale thing for a preacher who feels freed up.
Well, I have one story that I tell about, I guess you call them rubbish cans.
You like the British? You call them rubbish cans rather than trash cans? All right.
Pardon me? Garbage. Garbage. Oh, garbage. Okay. Wheelie bins.
Wheelie bins. That's a modern invention with wheels. Okay. Well, I'm talking about the old
tin garbage can. Well, I have a story where the fellow goes out, you know, and he's got a brand
new old tin garbage can. I mean, it's old, and we have old plastic ones today. I guess you have
old plastic ones too, but the old kind were tin. And the lid fit perfectly. It went shoop, shoop,
non-dictionary sounds, shoop, just fit right on. And you know how nice it is to have a brand new
garbage can. And he takes it out for its maiden voyage. There it is in all of its gleaming,
galvanized glory in the moonlight. He can hardly pull himself away from it and all this, you know,
it's a little description there to get people with it. And it's afternoon here anyhow. It's kind of
tough. So finally he goes to bed, and then the garbage collectors come along, and
they're going to kind of, they're kind of lackadaisical until one of them spots him and says,
there's a new one. And they have a go at it, you know, I won't go through all the things the dude
kicking it on and so forth. And the other fellow who's driving the truck missing out on this since
he's been promoted to driver, all the fun that comes when listening, but he spots the lid
behind the back tire. And he puts it in reverse and goes back over it and back
forward again and forward again. And then thereafter the lid always goes instead of
shoop. Well, those are a couple of non-dictionary sounds in that garbage can, which does have a
point to it, that story, which I haven't told you, but I'm just illustrating the
and the shoop sounds. So you see, there are some things in telling a story, and if you listen to
the great storytellers, they all use non-dictionary sounds and they all use dialogue. You know how
important dialogue is? So important that when you look at it in our Lord's parables, you see this
kind of thing happening. Here is that son, prodigal son, away in the distant fields,
and he comes to his senses, the Lord says, and then he says, notice he's talking and he's alone.
Two pigs around, but he isn't talking to them. He's alone. And he says to himself, you know,
those servants back in my father's house are better off than I am. He's talking to himself.
Dialogue! You don't have to have another person there in your story to have dialogue. They're all
coming out in a parachute and saying, now where did they tell me that thing is on the pole? You
can talk to himself. Here is this son talking to himself. But notice, he goes on, I know what I'll
do. I will go back to my father and I will say, quote within quote, talking to himself, father,
I have sinned against heaven and against you, and I am no longer worthy to be called your son.
Make me to be as one of your hired servants, end quote, end quote.
Quotes with end quotes while a man's talking to himself.
Now I tell you that's showing the importance of dialogue.
Powerful. You can see that boy talking. You can see him standing there. You can hear him talking.
You're brought right into the real event, as the Lord tells it. So these are some things about
this matter. Gestures, a word or two of gestures just including this section. There are three
kinds of gestures. Indicative. He went that way, that way. Indicated, index, index finger,
indicative. The finger you point with, you indicate things with. I'll take that one
up on the shelf. Descriptive. He was that high, that wide but that high. Descriptive. Or it was
shaped like this, you see, descriptive and emphatic. I tell you, this is the way to do it.
Wow. And one of the key things about gestures is that they should conform to the content and timing.
I want you to know that you should believe this with all your heart.
It doesn't quite cut it.
You say, I'm just kind of stiff. I feel like a bird when I'm in the pulpit. I can't
get my hands moving. If I do, I feel silly. I look silly. You know, my gestures are all kind
of within the body itself. They're all like this. They're stuck in here and never do anything like
that. They're like this, you know. Well, you need to practice gesture. Where do you practice,
in the pulpit? Oh, no. You don't practice there. You've got enough to think about the message and
the people and God. Practice outside the pulpit, but the only place you can get away with it is
talking to children. Otherwise, they'll call the fellows on the white coats with the butterfly now.
Get a group of children, whether they're yours or somebody else's. If they're yours,
it's wonderful. The children will love you for telling stories in which you practice your
non-dictionary sounds, in which you practice wild gestures of all sorts, you know, everything.
And until you get them down, and your children will love the stories, and your wife will love
the stories because you've taken the kids away for a while, and she'll get a little relief.
And your congregation will love the fact that you're now learning how to tell stories. So
everybody will love this. Gather yourself a little group of children and regularly tell stories.
Practice doing things with your voice. Whoo! You know, growl a little bit. Try everything. You see,
you can't get away with those things anywhere else except when talking to children and telling
stories. Everybody will recognize you as being wonderful with these kids. Otherwise, they put
you in the loony bin. So go out and try all kinds of things with your voice, with your hands,
all sorts of techniques in telling stories to children. Well, I think that's about enough.
We're going to have to conclude here with a few questions. How much time have we got left?
I didn't realize how the time was going. I'm sorry I went longer than I realized.
All right. We'll take the first question. If we can't get the first, we'll start with the second.
Well, maybe that says something about the rest of the sermon,
more than it does about the illustration. I think we all remember our Lord's illustration.
They are memorable. That's why I said if you're going to use your own sermons and
translate them into a preaching format, change the illustration, because that's what people
have to remember. But listen, maybe the rest of the message was where the problem was.
Maybe that's what it was. The illustration he missed all his time on this great illustration
and the rest of it fell flat. You see, that's the problem often. An illustration is intriguing,
and a lot of people like to get a good illustration, hone it up. There are people
like this who just excel in illustrative material, but they've neglected content,
they've neglected order and form, and they've neglected everything else.
And that's why I think an illustration destroys a message in the way in which you've suggested.
If you have a great illustration, you better have a great sermon to go with it.
I think that's the lesson. And you're right. That can happen. You can remember the illustration,
not even remember what it illustrated either. So he didn't really make his point.
He told an interesting story, or a shocking story or something, but he didn't make his point to the
story. That was where he failed. You're right, that's a danger. And the other thing that's
dangerous that I did today, purposely, so I could talk about it and then forgot to,
was not to complete a story. Like, but I didn't tell you what it was. Don't ever leave people
hanging like that. You know, they'll think the rest of the message, what happened? Was it a bear?
Was it a leaf? Was it, you know.
What kind of funny thing? Well now, I'm not suggesting you do those six of messages.
But I am suggesting where a good story calls for it, that's what it comes for.
Yeah, well the Presbyterian Church maybe shouldn't be the same. I don't know.
At least, at least the one I belong to shouldn't be.
Okay, somebody else.
You said that our basic practices should conform to the model of the scripture.
My question is, why should my basic practices conform to the model of the scripture?
Because they are revelation, that's why. Because when the Holy Spirit decided what preaching
should be like, then this is what he did. And you know, I don't think we can do any better than to
follow the pattern of the Spirit of God. So that's what I'm suggesting is why we should do it. Now,
I don't mean that it should be like those messages in every respect, obviously.
Many of those messages that we look at, in fact the majority of them in the New Testament,
are evangelistic messages out in a missionary context. And we have to realize that. And we
have to somehow or other look at the epistles to find out what preaching among believers was more
like. And actually, indeed, I think we're going to find some actual preaching in those messages,
since a number of them, Peter and Paul, were dictated to a congregation through an
amanuensis, and they begin to do a little preaching now and then in those letters.
Not the whole is preaching, but when Paul says, thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift,
a little bit of a preaching in there in that passage when he's writing it correctly.
So what I'm suggesting is, the very point is, is that when the Holy Spirit did inspire preaching,
that he kind of gave us a pretty good idea of what the what and what the how should be like.