A course of lectures on preaching by RL Dabney (Available from Amazon or free here)
Now Dabney gives us his thoughts on what passages are suitable texts for sermons.
The sermon text should:
(i) be God's word;
(ii) be accepted and discussed only in the very sense which it had in the mind of the Spirit as he uttered it;
(iii) contain a distinct and important point;
(iv) be perspicuous.
I'm not sure that I precisely agreed with Dabney's way of choosing texts. It seems like many texts would be wrongly dismissed as not worthy of being preached.
But I did like his encouragement to keep to the context: 'My second rule is violated when the text is discussed in a sense which it bears while disjoined from the context. Thus the words of Rom. xiv. 23, " Whatsoever is not of faith is sin," when read without any attention to the apostle's scope, have been wrested to teach the doctrine that the obedience of a sinner can not be accepted by God until he is a justified believer. This is a scriptural truth ; it might be correctly preached, for instance, from Heb. xi. 6 : "But without faith it is impossible to please Him." But when we advert to the subject of Rom. xiv. 23, we find that the inspired author is speaking of the sin of disregarding positive precepts of the old ceremonial law, while the conscience and judgment were still in suspense concerning their obligation on Christians. So that the meaning of his concluding proposition is, every act is wrong which is not prompted by a full conviction of its lawfulness.'
Failing to note context can lead into all sorts of trouble.
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.
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