When God Leads the Way - Part 3

Welcome to Right Beside You in the Pulpit with Dr. Stephen Rummage! 

This episode dives into the sermon prep for the sermon "When God Leads the Way."  

Over a four-week series, we’ll focus on a single sermon—tracing the journey from initial preparation all the way to the closing invitation on Sunday morning. Each month, we’ll also gather around the table with pastors from across our state to hear insights from their unique preaching rhythms, contexts, and experiences. 

As you listen, our prayer is that you’ll find encouragement and practical help to strengthen your weekly preaching of God’s Word. 

This podcast is funded by the generous Cooperative Program giving of Florida Baptist churches.  

If you have any questions about this episode, please email communications@flbaptist.org.

Transcript

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Welcome to Right Beside You in the Pulpit with Dr. Stephen Rummage, a series geared to help strengthen your preaching of God's Word and encourage us together along the way.

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Hi, pastors and church leaders. This is Stephen Rummage, Executive Director of the Florida Baptist Convention. I'm grateful to be with you today in this episode of Right Beside You in the Pulpit. Here's what we're doing today. We're stepping behind the pulpit and into the study. And we're going to walk through the study process that shaped my message when God leads the way from Acts chapter 8, verses 26 through 40. As a reminder, this conversation builds directly on my sermon from Acts chapter 8, verses 26 through 40. And you can listen to that whole sermon in episodes 1 and 2. If you haven't listened to those episodes yet, you may want to pause here and go back because that foundation will make today's discussion even more helpful. So let's dive in. So we're looking at the study process for the sermon that I preached called When God Leads the Way from Acts chapter 8, verses 26 through 40. And as I think about sort of taking you behind the scenes in the sermon prep process, I want to talk about what I did to study this text, then how I found the main idea, and then how I found the supporting ideas and the outline for the message. And then I want to give a consideration to how I determined what gets into the sermon and what gets left out of the sermon, because you wind up leaving out a lot of things that you've discovered in the study. I'm going to conclude my discussion today by talking a little bit about reflections on the message as a whole and some of the things that I saw as I preach this message. So just sort of jumping in, let's talk about the Bible study for this sermon. And my process every time I'm preaching a message, every time I begin, is to do what I call an analytical Bible study. Some people call it an inductive Bible study. I call it an analytical Bible study. And there are three basic parts to what I do. I begin by making observations of the text, usually verse by verse. Then I ask questions of the text, again verse by verse. And then after I've made those observations and asked the questions, then I go to my resources and I do the research that I need to, that I need to do in order to answer my questions. Now, this passage of Scripture, Acts 8, the story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch, is of course a narrative passage. And in narrative, the the way the text works and the way language works is different than if you're, for example, preaching from an epistle or something like that. So your study winds up being a little bit different. When I'm studying a narrative, I do focus on the words and word meanings, but I focus even more on things like the background behind the narrative, the history that that informs the narrative, the geography, perhaps, that that's happening, that's referred to in the narrative that I need to talk about. I'll do some word study, but it's it's an there's just the understanding when you're dealing with a narrative, language in biblical narrative moves the story along. And so what you want to do is to see how is this story moving along, and what do you need to do to decrease the distance between you as the interpreter and the preacher and this historical narrative. And so I began my study here with observations, and with this text, I wrote down every verse of scripture in this in this passage in Acts 8. I wrote every verse at the top of the page, and that in itself, just paying attention to each verse as I write it out by hand or type it into my computer, it helps me to focus on each word. I wrote down every verse at the top of a page, and then underneath each verse, I began with observations. Now, the thing that I focused on in my observations of this passage was to look at the uh the plot and the movements and how this story was unfolding sequentially as the Word of God tells us what happened. And so I went through and just sort of outlined the plot points and made a note of important things that were happening in the text. Uh, there were some times that I paid attention to repeated words and phrases or contrasting words and phrases. One thing I found really interesting as I made observations in verse 32 of the text, quoting from Isaiah 53, the Bible says of the Messiah that he opened not his mouth. And then down in verse 35, it says, Philip opened his mouth, which I thought that was an interesting thing, that in in his suffering, the Lord Jesus did not open his mouth, but in his witness, Philip did open his mouth. I just made a note of things like that in the narrative. I just go through the text verse by verse, and anything I can see on my own, I make observations of. After I made observations of all the verses of this text, then I went back and verse by verse, underneath my observations for each verse, I began to ask questions. And uh I asked questions about language, I ask questions about history, I ask questions about geography or or background, just anything I can ask that I don't know about in order to delve more deeply into this text. So beginning in verse 26, one of the questions I asked about from verse 26 is the significance of the angel of the Lord. And in the sermon as I preached it, if you've listened to the message, you know I talk a little bit about the biblical significance of the angel of the Lord from the book of Genesis all the way through the New Testament. Well, I just I know from past Bible study that the angel of the Lord is a significant uh part of this text, and so I did some background research on that. And then I also asked some really simple questions like, you know, where was this desert road uh that goes from Jerusalem to Gaza? What was that like? Where was Philip when when the angel of the Lord told him to rise up and go on this road? What did that mean? What was some of the geography going on there? When I came to verse 27 and the Bible talks about uh a man of Ethiopia. Well, of course, I'm going to ask, well, where was Ethiopia? And you find out uh that Ethiopia, as we know it, as modern Ethiopia, is probably not the region of the world that the Bible is is is referring to here. It's a part of uh of the world in Africa that would be uh near Egypt, is is is what's in view here. And you make the decision about how much of that you bring into the sermon, but certainly you want to know those things. And so I asked questions about that. I also asked contextual questions. Who was Philip? What else does the book of Acts tell us about Philip, both before and after this passage? Where had he been? What was he doing when the angel of the Lord told him to rise up and go on this road? I began to ask those kinds of questions. Then I asked, in additional to, in addition to context questions, I asked some background questions. Who was this eunuch? What did it mean to be a eunuch? Uh who was Candace, the queen of Ethiopia? What does all that mean? I also did some word study along the way. Specifically, I talked about or I asked questions about the meaning of the word baptize, how it's used elsewhere in Scripture or outside of Scripture, just to understand the meaning of that word. But the purpose in all of the questions that I ask when I'm dealing with a narrative, the purpose is to decrease the historical distance between me and the text. The same thing's true for you. When you're studying a narrative, you are seeking to decrease historical distance so that you'll understand the world of that text, and also to decrease some of the theological distance so that you'll understand what God is communicating in this portion of God's word. Because we remember, God's purpose in historical narrative is never just historical, it's always ultimately theological. In the story, in the narrative, God is revealing Himself to us. And so those are the questions, the kinds of questions that I asked. And then after I've asked all my questions, I go back now to my resources, and I found that in studying this passage, the most helpful resources to me were a good Bible dictionary, a good backgrounds commentary, the other commentaries that I would use in studying the book of Acts. And so I used those resources, but I never go to my resources until I already have questions. I always want to make sure that I'm going to the resources with questions that I'm seeking to answer. That sort of streamlines my study and it helps me to really find out what I need to find out about the passage. As I think about asking questions, one of the things I also think about asking, I try to ask questions that I think people in my congregation will ask. And so, you know, after you've studied the Word of God for a long time and preached for a long time, sometimes we forget the things that we used to not know about, right? There are things that, you know, now to us we sort of take for granted that we know, but that our listeners may not know. And sometimes it's helpful to ask a question, even for something that's that's not mysterious or unknown to you, but to ask the question so that you can explain the details of the text in the clearest and most simple language to your people when you stand in the pulpit. So I ask those kinds of questions as well. So that that's my study process for for this. It's a narrative passage, so I'm focusing on decreasing the historical and theological distance. I'm looking at the overall movement of the story. I'm asking questions about context. I'm asking questions about history, I'm asking questions about geography and background, as well as doing some word study. The next thing I want to talk about in my study process is finding the main idea of the passage. Now, in a narrative passage of scripture, the main idea is almost always found by means of implication and suggestion. Here's what I mean by that. Very rarely is a narrative going to have a thesis statement in the text that tells you what the main idea of the author is. Instead, you're looking at the whole text, and based on what the author has said as the Holy Spirit has inspired this text, you are finding by means of implication and suggestion what the main idea is. I looked at this text, and as I looked at the passage from start to finish, as I ask the question, what is the author talking about? The main thing I see the author talking about is guidance. And I see it all the way through the text, from the time the angel of the Lord speaks to Philip and says, Arise and go on this road that leads from Jerusalem to Gaza, all the way through to the time he tells him to go join the Ethiopian in his chariot. And then the Ethiopian, when Philip asks him, Do you understand what you're reading? He says, Well, how can I unless someone guides me? And then they come to water, and and the Ethiopian says, Well, you know, what's to prevent me from being baptized? And then at the end, the Holy Spirit takes Philip one place, and the Ethiopian keeps going on uh to back back home, now changed in his heart because of what Jesus has done in his life. So I just see the theme of guidance all the way through. So I always ask the question, what is the biblical author talking about? And I quite try to answer that with one word. Hear that one word answer is guidance. The biblical author is talking about guidance. Then I ask a second question: how is the biblical author limiting what he's talking about? I mean, he could say all kinds of things about guidance, but what does this particular passage have to say about guidance? And I gave the simple answer following. This text is about following God's guidance. You could say it this way. In this text, Philip and then the Ethiopian eunuch followed God's guidance. And from that, I arrived at the sermon title and really the thesis that I used in preaching, When God Leads the Way. What happens in our lives when God leads the way? So that's how I found the main idea. I just encourage you, with any passage you're looking at, ask after you've done your study, after you understand the text, ask those two questions. What is the biblical author talking about? And then, secondly, how is he limiting what he's talking about? And then from there, I want to talk about the structure. How did I find the structure of the passage? In narrative, one of the things I've learned to do is to look for major movements in the story, and if possible, to let those movements in the story become the points or the division statements for your message. And so as I looked at this narrative and I saw several movements in the story. First of all, Philip goes on the road from from Jerusalem to to Gaza, then next he meets the eunuch, then next he explains the scripture, and then finally the eunuch is baptized, and then sort of the the end of the story, uh both the eunuch and Philip are led to the next place. Those first four movements became the points of my message. So based on those four movements, I I articulated the points. When God leads the way, he'll take you to the right place at the right time, and that's Philip going to the desert. Second, when God leads the way, he'll bring you to people who are searching, that's Philip meeting the eunuch. Third, when God leads the way, he'll open the scriptures to reveal Jesus. That's the exposition of the passage from Isaiah. And then when God leads the way, he'll lead new believers to be baptized. And that's, of course, the eunuch being baptized. And so I use those points to walk me through the narrative in this uh in this sermon. Now, so that's the main idea, that's the structure, that that gives me the framework for the message. The next thing I want to talk a little bit about is what do you leave in and what do you leave out? If if you go through a passage, and when when I went through this passage, you know, verse by verse, with observations, questions, and research for every verse, I wind up with more material than than I could possibly preach in any one sermon. And so I I begin to have to ask the question, well, what what do I put in and what do I leave out? And I've learned that determining the main idea and then the supporting idea, the points of the message, when I know my main idea and when I know my supporting ideas, those become like the governors that determine what gets into the sermon. Every detail from your study cannot come into the pulpit. It doesn't need to. But what you want to do is to let your main idea and your points serve as the governors that decide what gets in. And what gets in is that which supports the main idea and the points. And so there are things I left out. If you you know, if you listen to me preach this message, uh I I didn't talk a lot about the identity of Candace, the Queen of Ethiopia. I said that she was the queen mother of Ethiopia and that she had more power even than the king would have. Uh, but I didn't tell more than I could have told, for example, that the the term Candace is not the queen's name. It was actually a a title, Candike or Candace. It's a title that the Ethiopians use for the Queen Mother, just like the Egyptians called their leader Pharaoh, and the the Romans called their leader uh Caesar. I I didn't talk about that because it really didn't make any difference in explaining the text. I could have done a much deeper explanation about why eunuchs could not fully participate in temple worship. There's more to be told there. I didn't I didn't tell all that. Why? Because it wasn't necessary for me to explain the text. I could have done a greater explanation of the angel of the Lord and Christophanes in the Old Testament and all those things. And those are interesting things, but again, do they serve the main idea and the supporting ideas of the text? Now, one of the things that was really interesting to me that, you know, if I were teaching this passage as compared to preaching it, I probably would have done a deeper dive into where this conversion narrative fits in the whole of the book of Acts. For example, this text of the Ethiopian eunuch being saved is one of seven key conversion stories in the book of Acts. The other ones are, the first one is the 3,000 who were saved at Pentecost, that's in Acts chapter 2. And then secondly, the Samaritans who were saved under the ministry of Philip, that's the beginning of Acts chapter 8. Then this one, the Ethiopian eunuch who was saved, that's the third. And then the fourth is Saul of Tarsus, as he was saved. That's explained in Acts chapter 9, and then again in chapters 22 and 26. And then the next one is Cornelius and his household. That's number five. Number six is Lydia, who got saved under the ministry of Paul. And then the seventh major conversion story that I see in the book of Acts is the Philippian jailer, and that's found in Acts chapter 16. Lydia is also found in Acts chapter 16. It's very interesting. In every one of those passages, in every case, baptism is commanded immediately. You could go through a good part of the book of Acts just by looking at those seven major conversion stories. But again, that didn't come into the sermon because it became extraneous to the main idea and the supporting ideas of the text. Something else that I didn't talk about in the sermon that I could have, and I want to address it here because there are people who are going to be asking the question. There's a textual variant between Acts 8, verse 36 and 8, verse 38. If you're reading from the ESV, it just jumps from 36 to 38. But there's a textual variant. If you have the King James Version Bible, or if you have the New King James Version Bible, you'll find verse 37. And verse 37 is really simple. When the eunuch asks, What hinders me from being baptized? In verse verse 37, the variant says, Then Philip said, If you believe with all your heart, you may. And so that that verse is not found in either the Alexandrian text type or the Byzantine majority text type. So the oldest text and the majority texts, uh, the majority of the texts of the New Testament don't contain that verse. It's only found in the Western text, which means the King James Version has it, the New King James Version has it, although the New King James Version has it with a note. Why did I not explain it in the sermon? Because it takes as long to explain it as it just took me to explain it in this podcast. And really, it's extraneous to the main idea of the message. And so what do you do with that? Well, I you know, I've I've preached this message now a few times. I've had one person who came up to me and asked me to explain it to them. I gave them a similar explanation to what I just gave you, and that was that was enough. And so you have to make decisions about you know how much of that you bring to the table. Sometimes it's pertinent, most of the time it's not. Um anyway, so I I just I go through the the outline that that the Lord has led me to as I've analyzed the text, and I use that outline, the main idea and the points, as the governor to determine what gets left in the message and what gets left out. I want to finish up with just a few reflections on this sermon as I've had opportunity to preach it. It's been a strong opportunity for me to preach on following God's leadership in every regard, on following his leadership in sharing the gospel, on following his leadership and going wherever he sends us, and viewing even the interruptions in our lives as God's sovereign hand taking us where we need to be. It's also a great opportunity to preach about how the Old Testament points so clearly to Jesus Christ, certainly in this Isaiah passage, but we know in many other passages as well. And this passage also helps me to think about how the gospel of Jesus Christ breaks down every barrier. Think about the barriers that are broken down here racial barriers and national barriers, and then the barrier of this. Ethiopian eunuch's past and decisions that he had made that that affected every day of his life, and yet how God had something great for him on the other side of that through the gospel. And so that's been exciting for me. As I finish up, I'll just share with you I was preaching this message uh just a couple of weeks ago, and it was in a church where they had an early service and then a later service. I preached the message in the first service. At the beginning of the second service, right before the service uh began, somebody came up to me and said, Hey, Stephen, uh, as you preach the first message, there are two guys here, one guy from Ethiopia and one guy from Cameroon. And uh, and we've been witnessing to them, and as you preached, one of us who've been sharing the gospel with him came and tapped this Ethiopian man on the shoulder and said, Hey, do you think that God is speaking to you in this message? And of course the guy said, Yes. And that day, in fact, at the beginning of the second service, a man from Ethiopia and a man from Cameroon both followed Jesus Christ in Believers' Baptism after having heard God speak to them through this message on the Ethiopian man who heard the gospel and followed Jesus in believers' baptism. It's just a reminder to me that God's always working. He works in incredible ways. When we're faithful to proclaim his word, he'll do things that we couldn't even imagine. And it also reminds me something that I'm trying to learn to do, and that is to pray for the sermon you preached even after you preached it. Not just before, but after you preached your message. Pastor, pray for that sermon because God is working beyond the time that you preached to change lives and to change hearts through the power of the gospel. This is a great, great text. I enjoyed preaching it and enjoyed sharing with you a little bit about how I studied. Pastor, thank you so much for listening today. I want you to join us for next week's episode as we invite a few other pastors to talk about their sermon prep on this same passage. It's going to be a fun conversation, and I really can't wait for next week. I want to encourage you also, please subscribe to this podcast so that you'll automatically get the new weekly episodes. God bless you, and remember, we're right beside you.

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Thank you for listening to today's episode of Right Beside You in the Pulpit with Dr. Stephen Rummage. This podcast is made possible through your faithful cooperative program giving. For more resources, ministries, and upcoming events in Florida Baptist life, visit fblbaptist.org.