How Does John MacArthur Build His Sermons?

so mac let's talk about process the process walk us through it big picture what does it look like to prepare a sermon give us your method your process your step by step well it should be pretty obvious since i'm going through a book i know what's coming next so i know what has been previously developed so i know the flow i i see the context so what i do is to begin with i read through the text and i read through it enough so that it's in my head because one of the things i've learned through the years is if i have that text in my head and i leave the desk and i go somewhere else or do something else it's still rolling around in my mind and i'm coming up with some of the best things i ever think of in the process of not being focused on that but just in the moments of it being in my head so i like to have that text in my head early in the week and you do that by repeated reading and just by stewing on it yeah yeah just meditating on the text and then the second step is when i sit down at my desk and and i go back to the original tools and whether it's lexicons or greek dictionary or whatever i need to make sure i'm dealing with the with the words in the best way obviously i've got to get that right so i want to know what it says that's the first question what does this actually say that's the first task so i develop an understanding of it okay i get what it says i've read it over and over in the english language and i've gone back to the original and i know what it says so the next task is what does it mean so to help me with what it means inevitably i'll read maybe a dozen commentaries because commentaries do several things number one what they do is they give me the benefit of past illumination i don't need to think that that all illumination landed with me i believe the spirit of god has been illuminating the truth of scripture for centuries ever since the scripture was written and i want to take advantage of that so i i have guys i trust sources i trust and i go back and read them so the first thing it does is it unloads it downloads into my mind past illumination which is very important to me because i don't want something new i don't i don't want anything that sounds new like i never heard that before that scares me i want to make sure i'm in the flow of how the spirit of god has illuminated men in the past i think it's very dangerous to assume that even with a greek text in your hand you're going to draw all the right conclusions if you ignore past illumination and i would just add this there is an amazing consistency to the illumination of the word of god you can go all the way back to the fathers you can go back to the reformers you can go back to the puritans you can go back to the american uh you know preachers like r.l dabney and and jonathan edwards and and you're gonna see that they handled the word of god essentially with the same insights and the same interpretation so illumination in the past is really important the second thing that delivers to me is fresh ways to understand the text because it's it's like having instead of me looking at this text by myself i've i've got around the booth eight guys who passed illumination who are telling me what they see what nuances what richness what depth what aspects of the text come to them so and they're often all seeing the same meaning they see the same meaning but they're showing it in a in a different they have a different way to express it yeah they have a different way to connect it and that's the next thing i do i look for immediately when i'm in that process i look for other scriptures cross-references that would enrich my understanding of that or connect it historically or connect it doctrinally and and broaden it and widen it and deepen it and i find a lot of that in commentaries i also use treasury of scripture knowledge which chases that same idea all through the scripture so i'm looking for a lot of cross-references because i like to interpret the bible by the bible as you know and people always say you have so much scripture in your preaching yeah because the scripture interprets the scripture so so now i've got the significance of it i've got all the input past illumination i've got all the cross references i need and then i start thinking about the theology of it what what are the theological issues here and do i know enough about them and if i'm going to expand on those theological truths what do i want to say so i start connecting them with other theological ideas or theological passages so i have the theology right and it always doesn't go in this sequence right now sometimes theology hits you when you're looking at the greek sometimes yeah earlier on in your confirmation of other witnesses so but this is this is kind of the logical sequence of moving so that's why when i have an eight and a half by eleven sheet in which i do this it's it's not linear it's some ideas here and some ideas here and over here there's some more ideas and over here there's some more ideas and then down the side there's some more as i accumulate all of that and that gives me a sort of a rough draft so you have this basically research you've you've gone through and described your research and meditation obviously this whole thing is bathed in prayer in meditation in confirmation from from church history i'm glad you mentioned meditation because sometimes people will say to me you know how did you get that where did you come up with that and i say i just thought about it it's the most important part of sermon prep is just to sit with the text isn't it yeah and i say to guys my chair goes forward and it goes backwards and when it goes backwards sometimes it's more productive than when it goes forward i get all the nuts and bolts forward but backward the the you know you could say the science happens in the forward position the art happens in the backward position as i begin to think about this and i've told you before all the time through this process i'm asking questions of the text what does this mean if it means that what about this what about this how does that square with this what does that do with this doctrine how does that what how do i interpret another verse over here if that's true all those questions are need to be answered in my mind to understand the text and the whole idea of preparation is not the sermon but to understand the text then the sermon comes together so that's what we got to talk about next you've described the whole research process and you have your your legal pad with all your questions most of them now answered you've found interesting quotes different ways of saying it you've been meditating on the text you still don't have a sermon at that point so let's talk about no imposing the sermon if you called me and said get up and preach this it would be absolute chaos right because it's not structured right so at that point i i think about an outline and how do i structure this and as i've been saying i i sort of start with where i want to end what am i driving at now i know what this thing's going to drive at i i can't have 15 points and now this and now this this all has to go in one direction and end up in one glorious consummate truth so i decide where i'm going with that and what that's going to be and then i fill in an outline that moves progressively through the material and normally would you say your outline is kind of based on the structure of the text or does it is there variance there sometimes it's you're asking questions other times you do different kinds of outlines yeah but where does that structure come from very unusual that i would do an outline that rearranges the text yeah very unusual all my outlines virtually follow the flow of the text because the text is making an argument the text is making a logical argument and i have to i have to follow that it's not like i'm pulling devotional ideas out of this there's an argument there and i have to track with that argument through the text so so the outline almost always follows the flow of that argument verses one through three is point one four to five point two six to eight because that's what the writer is doing unless you're in proverbs right you know and you're just getting proverbs slung out in the air sure but yeah every other book you have to follow the historical narrative of the logical flow right and then you finally have an outline and you have to now decide what you're going to put in it and you don't put everything that you've read thought and researched into that outline or the sermon would be two weeks long no when i what i do is i write out a rough draft i write out a rough draft for the for the purpose of getting the logical flow um i don't have the logical flow until i do that process of writing it out on it's it's another sort of rough draft but that's now i've got all this all these loose ends and i'm putting them in logical flow now i know where i'm going with this thing i also know that i can't include everything in that all i want is the flow and there are trigger words and trigger sentences and trigger paragraphs that are gonna gonna hit my mind and there's a lot more back there waiting to be released when i when that trigger hits right because you're not a preacher who's preaching off of a full manuscript no it's about i don't know what you have written down is maybe ten or twenty percent of what you say i would i would guess having looked at your sermon i like to think of my notes as landing lights yeah you know i'm trying to i'm trying to land this thing right and i still have to stay on track um because i because i preach to the same people for half a century i do have to write sentences down because i don't want to repeat myself and and i don't want to have a lot of fallback phrases and fall back comments that are tired and have have been heard too many times so i don't trust myself enough to be creative in the pulpit to say it a different way so i try when i do write a sentence it needs to be a sentence that's unique yeah so that i i say something with a fresh uh spin so are you trying to craft especially your thesis sentence or your kind of first words are you are you usually coming in with knowing exactly how you're going to start that sermon well i don't i don't really get an introduction and a conclusion until i have the sermon sort of shape because i have to know what i'm going to say and then i can back up to how i want to introduce it you got a lot of options there right you can pick a lot of ways to go but um sometimes the the introduction and even though in my final notes it's the first thing i write it may be the last thing i put in my rough notes right and then when you're talking about the the telos or the end or the the argument you're talking about the the meaning and the the aha sometimes of the text that's what everything's driving towards yeah you don't want the aha moment 15 minutes into the sermon right you gotta you gotta hold that back to keep them interested um i would like to think that i'm such a commanding orator that everybody's gonna be interested but i'm not under any illusions about that so what i have to do is captivate them by tying them to the text and they've learned that if they stick with this thing there will be a moment when they will say wow i see i see that and it's it's ideal if that sort of coalesces at the end most of your illustrations in your sermons come from the bible but sometimes you talk about something happening in the headlines or in our world today a worldview issue and and illustrations for you are are they're not usually they're they're never silly stories they're usually something very uh illuminating something that explains what this looks like yeah the the times that i refer to anything in the culture is almost always in the introduction yeah because i'm trying to set up a problem a dilemma a danger a heresy i'm trying to say this is what's wrong now let's go find out how to make it right right but once i get into the flow of the text i i don't back into the culture and might make an off-handed comment but that's a setup and i think that's a helpful setup because they're you can't ignore things i mean in this this um long period of covert with everything that's been going on you can't you can't be a blockhead and ignore what everybody's thinking so you you set the hook by recognizing the dilemmas by recognizing the challenges by i was just talking to a guy who said you know i've got 12 grandchildren and i've been so disturbed and so distressed that they're living in the world they're living in and i just didn't know what to do and then i listened to you and you said god brought them to the kingdom for such a time as this this is their time and after setting up how horrible the world is and then to say that it just delivered him from that fear so i think you when you speak to people you need to speak to them where they live and then on the basis of what they need to know draw them into the text which answers that so unlike some preachers you're not trying to bring the text to this century you're trying to bring your audience to that time yeah you're still between two worlds but you're more pulling them to the ancient world so i'm not tying a rope to the bible and dragging it into the present right i'm tying a rope to the people in the present and dragging them into the past you have a present problem here is a past revelation that answers it so let's let's finish the the thinking about the sermon it's it's almost done i think you've you've thought about you've done all your research marination meditation stewing thinking writing rough drafting you you've you've come up with i mean enough that you're gonna have how many pages what what do you have an idea well the one i was working on the last couple of days there's about eight of those little half sheets that i use and right fairly large and yeah about eight pages and so you know you have i mean you always can say more than on the page but how do you know you're done is it because it's sunday morning no i look um my brain is timed you know there's the old story about the guy that when he get up to preach he put a mint in his mouth and when it was done you know he quit and one day got a button but i have an internal clock if i didn't see a clock anywhere yeah i i would i would i could predictably go somewhere between 50 yeah an hour five minutes and then 62 minutes there's just an internal clock so i know where i'm going without looking at a clock and trying to do some kind of mental gymnastics where am i with this thing i i just have a feeling so even in my preparation i kind of know where i'm going to go but i know that this i can't stop i have to end and ending is different than stopping right stopping is when you say oh i'm out of time goodbye um no i i i've got to end and then i can stop and the end may be the most important thing of all yeah so let's talk about it you you have it you've got a plan in place you've got some notes along with you and now you climb those stairs that you've been climbing for 51 years and you stand in the pulpit what's happening in that moment you're definitely not reading your notes because if you were we'd be done in 15 minutes yeah probably less yeah um if i didn't read out all the scriptures um you have your bible open in front of you my bible is open to the notes and um you know i i honestly don't know what it's like to look at me when i'm preaching in one sense but i i glance over the notes i have the pulpit i like the pulpit high enough so that i don't have my head at people i like the notes up high on the pulpit so i can look across the notes to the congregation and just glance down and see my notes without i've seen guys who have maybe somewhat extensive notes and a short pulpit and all you're doing is watching the top of their head the whole time i would encourage pastors that there are some sensible common sense things you can do one is to get a pulpit that's high enough so you can look across your notes and if you're a tall guy like you are you know you that's why we've got a little knob on it you can turn it up as high as you want that's right but i think it's important that you're you're looking at your audience without looking at individuals i don't know any preacher that really looks at individuals that's distracting uh unless you occasionally look at your wife to make sure she's listening right you you just in there yeah you're they're there and you you you feel the reactions you see the motion of the crowd you you sometimes catch a glimpse of someone's response but but there's a relationship happening there no between the preacher and the congregation there's a conversation even though it's a monologue but you feel that conversation that moves from one person to the next no you're not making eye contact with all these people but you can feel them coming along with you either the turning of the pages and your congregation is well trained and preaching to them is an experience and i think every preacher who's ever graced your pulpit as a guest has enjoyed it because of that because you've trained those people on how to listen to a sermon so talk about what you know i i don't know even how how cognizant you are of of what's happening in the crowd but you're bringing them along with you and you can tell when you are no i there's a there's a i don't know how to say it but there's a sort of a crowd personality and at grace church they're very wrapped they're very quiet they move when i say look at verse six and all the heads go down and when i'm pointing out things in the text you know what i've said is i don't want a video screen in there i don't need to be on a video screen you don't need to look at me you need to listen to me and look at your bible and so that that's why we don't project me 18 feet high in the front of the auditorium that's not necessary they need to hear me and see the scripture so it's it's really it's a it's really a a three-part conversation it's it's myself and them and the bible and i'm looking at the bible and i'm looking at them and they're looking at the bible and they're looking at back it back into me and that's how it rolls we could say and that's the way i like it i want them fully engaged with the text of scripture so that they can walk away and say not that i heard john speak but that i understand that text yeah and i want to give them that gift that that what i look at when i get up there my prayer to the lord is let me lord give them the gift of the understanding of this revelation you want them to go where you have gone during the week exactly yeah and i i give them enough of the process as well so that i don't just preach the conclusions i preach the process that gave me those conclusions yeah because you're teaching them how you came to these conclusions teaching them how to study the bible right yeah mac thanks for bringing us on the journey it was epic we were we were there in your little study nook and then we got to climb up in the pulpit with you and i think this is a great example of of walking through the week that has dominated your your life in ministry and and satisfied your heart all these years so thank you thank you austin you

Channel: The Master's Seminary

Views: 41,726

Rating: 4.9334612 out of 5

Keywords: The Master's Seminary, John MacArthur, Expository Preaching, Inerrancy, Biblical Teaching, TMS, Bible, Truth, Scripture, Pastor, Chapel

Id: OPQj-HhADV8

Length: 21min 18sec (1278 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 04 2021