Planting, Weeding, Watering 8.31.2023

     I do not get to preach this Sunday. Grayville Days is the big event for our little town. Several days of “State-Fair food”, a parade, live bands, and vendors. Sunday is the last day, ending with fireworks and beginning with a community Church service. It’s not my turn to preach so I’m off the hook for this Sunday. 

    This is fine because I’m finishing my background studies for an extensive series from Philippians. I’ve been reading, cross-referencing, and getting ready for lots of exegetical work. Much of what I’m doing right now can be illustrated by a gardening metaphor. Planting seeds, pulling weeds, watering what is growing. This preliminary work is essential to streamlining my studies. Ministry can get out of hand. Things happen beyond our control and many claims are made on our time. Some of those claims do not consider the hard deadline(s) we face. Once again, we arrive at processes, procedures, and best practices. Either we work through our days with a plan, or the very next thing grabs our attention. Let’s think for a bit about how good habits of cultivation contribute to the end product; dynamic life-changing sermons.

Planting

    It begins with the sowing of seeds. If you follow this blog, you have heard me repeatedly blather on about Sermon Calendaring. The first seeds sown for my imminent series from Philippians went into the “soil” last October. That is when I went through my old, oily (I don’t know why and hope it is not cacogenic) GNT3 checking the paragraphing for a large exegetical series. After I worked out how long I needed to preach the entire series I added it to the calendar and worked in shorter series around it. 

    The next step was to take a cursory glance at the resources I had on hand to determine if I would need to make plans to acquire commentaries, studies, and monographs to supplement what I already had. About two months ago I began to search in earnest for additional materials. The selection of resources ended this week because at this point I have too much to even use.

    Seed planting is step number one. I need a reasonable idea of the difficulty of the exegesis. That requires me to look over my past work and assess the accuracy of my architectural work on the text. This brings us to another major step. 

Weeding

    In looking at the last time I preached through Philippians I begin the process of determining whether I am going to use any of the “produce” from the past. I need to go into those old fields and clear some of the debris that has accumulated; in this case 13 years’ worth of new resources, information, data, and thinking about NT exegesis. 

    I look at the actual exegesis, sentence flows, notes, word studies, and language analysis. Though I intend to do the work anew this time around, the exegesis is for the most part “accurate.” Next comes looking at the actual sermons. Things have changed quite a bit since 2010. Then I used a detailed outline. Now I use a manuscript. Some of the material might be useful, but I have decided that in following the general theme for the year (beginnings) I will stick as closely as possible to the title/theme for the series Completing the Work God Began. There is a point at which reworking old sermon material does not fit with the different trajectory I’m taking through the book.

    A final weeding process involves all those resources I mentioned. I have narrowed down the commentaries I intend to regularly reference in preparation for this series. Of the forty or so commentaries I have available I intend to consult eight of them regularly throughout the series. I also have a cadre of “classic” commentaries that I intend to read for their historic and sometimes still insightful remarks. 

    Next, I need to weed out some of the exegetical articles I have on specific texts. For example, I have twenty-six articles just on chapter 2.1-11. And a couple of seminal monographs on the passage. I will have to use the commentary Bibliographies to pick out the ones to read in detail. If I were writing a commentary, I would read it all. However, each week begins with Sunday and ends with Sunday. The first day of the week and the eighth, eternal day of the week. One must be ready to preach. One must be selective. One must weed the garden. I will not say everything I can say about Philippians, nor even everything I might want to say about Philippians. I will say what God has commissioned me to say in this series, at this time, in this place. I will do the work to the best of my ability and sleep every night knowing that I have been a diligent, able workman. 

Watering

    Some ideas come into the world fully formed. Sometimes when you read a text an outline leaps to your mind along with prospective illustrations. Other times ideas are anemic and in need of much attention. Those ideas require tender-loving care and a lot of water. It can seem unrewarding to spend a lot of time working through cultural or social history while preparing to preach. That is until we remember that Paul was addressing real people and that we likewise will go into the pulpit to speak for God to His people. So, we understand the people of Philippi, the culture of a Roman colony, and the nature of the Hellenistic literature of consolation all to ensure that the roots we are planting are strong enough to support durable sermons. 

    Materials read now, or weeks ago will contribute to the future harvest when the roots of my studies go deep enough to nourish my exegesis, outlining, and exposition of individual texts. The work of watering never ends because we mortals have no control over outcomes. We do control our inputs. We can irrigate the cleared fields to ensure that our work on the text enables us to think rigorously and write clearly so that we may preach with passion, and our congregation, though they hear our voice, can actually detect the voice of God in our preaching. 

Harvest

    The harvest is not really a part of the process, it is the outcome. Good sermons that teach the text, challenge those who do not believe, and encourage those who do that is our goal. What we do before Sunday morning largely determines the quality of the sermon. The ultimate outcome comes from God. Paul reminds us that our role is always subordinate to God and cooperative in nature.

“I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.” (1 Corinthians 3:6 ESV)

    This is not to say that we should forgo preparation and throw ourselves upon the grace of God. We plant, weed, and water as well as possible so that God’s Spirit can speak to the Spirit-led or Spirit-sensitive heart. God’s Word is powerful to save. Faithful preaching allows the Holy Spirit to engage open hearts, The Spirit in the text working with the Spirit in the believer to deepen devotion to the risen Christ. 

    There is no shortcut to harvest time. If you’re growing corn, you do the work. If you’re curing souls, you do the work. In neither case do you magically create the harvest. In both, God brings the harvest to prepared fields saturated with prayer. So be in prayer, and diligent in labor and expect God to bring blessings to His field.