Failure is Not Final - Part 3

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

This episode dives into the sermon prep for the sermon "Failure is Not Final."  

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, Pastor and Church Leader. 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. And 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, Failure is Not Final, from Mark chapter 14, verses 66 through 72. As a reminder, this conversation builds directly on my sermon in the previous two episodes. If you haven't listened to those episodes yet, you might want to pause here and go back because that foundation will make today's discussion even more helpful. Also, I want to encourage you to please subscribe to this podcast so that you'll automatically get the new weekly episodes. All right, let's dive in. I want to start by thinking about the study and how I dealt with this passage. Of course, the passage in Mark 14 deals with Peter's denial. And it's a relatively short text of scripture there at the end of Mark chapter 14. I moved into the beginning of chapter 15 at the end of the message, but the bulk of the study had to do with those verses at the end of Mark 14. Now, this is a familiar text for us. And so I think one of the challenges for a preacher when you're dealing with a text like this is just to think through how do I preach with freshness and relevance and with new information brought to the table as I deal with this familiar text. And the truth is, most texts are not as familiar as we may think they are for the people who are listening. So one of the things I would tell you as you're dealing with a familiar text like this one, don't assume the listener's familiarity with it. There are details about this passage that may be very familiar to you, and so you might be likely to sort of skip past things or assume that people know things where your congregation may not be as familiar, may not know this text as well as you think they do. And so don't assume their familiarity with it. And also, even in their familiarity of the text, beware of what I call a Sunday school understanding of a passage like this. And here's what I mean by this. Most of us heard the story of Peter denying Jesus and the rooster crowing. We heard that story if we grew up in church, when we were little boys or little girls. We heard that story a long time ago. And we heard it when we were kids. We we revisited maybe and heard the story again when we were uh young people. We might hear the pastor allude to this. We might have heard preachers allude to this story and sort of reference it as part of an Easter sermon or a part of a sermon on the cross without really preaching the whole text. And so a lot of times the listener has, like I said, like uh a Sunday school understanding where they they they've got the the general gist of the story. They may not have all the details right, they think they know it better than they do. And so for that reason, actually showing them what the text says and going through it carefully and retelling the story uh with detail and with accuracy will bring new information to the listener that that they weren't even aware they didn't know about. And so explain the things that you know from the text that your your listener may not completely know or that they may understand incorrectly. There's some details about this text that I tried to make sure I I paid attention to as I preached. I talked about Caiaphas, the high priest, and what it meant for Jesus to be tried by the Sanhedrin there in his house. I talked about uh, for example, in Mark chapter 14, verse 70, where the Bible says that they they knew that Peter was a Galilean, and I talked about the background from that, that he talked differently, that the Galileans spoke differently than the people in Judea. Just those details. So I would say for this text and for any text of scripture we're preaching, especially narratives that are familiar, don't assume that your listener is as familiar as you are with it, and don't assume that they've got all the facts right. They may, they may have some things that they've gotten jumbled up in their thinking. And in fact, as I study this passage, I'm always amazed there are things that I've gotten jumbled up in my own thinking that I have to get corrected as I'm studying it. And so just uh one one time I was talking to a class and and I or a group of pastors, and I said something, somebody quoted it back to me, and here's how I said it don't forget to remember the things you used to not know. And that's a convoluted way of saying that, but that's the way I said it. Don't forget to remember the things you used to not know. And uh as as you're preaching, there are things that that you know and become familiar with, and sometimes you're uh tempted to just assume your listener knows that. Whereas they don't really know those things. There was a time you didn't know those things, and you've come to understand them. So when you preach, don't forget to remember those things you used to not know and make sure you explain them carefully. So that's one thing with this passage, just dealing with a familiar text. Another thing that I encountered in my study of this passage is the fact that you're dealing with an account that is found in all of the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, as well as in John's Gospel. This story of Peter's denial uh of Jesus occurs in in every one of the gospels. And it it has different emphases in each gospel. There are slight variations of detail in the gospels. And so I would encourage you, one of the things that that that I found myself trying to sort of struggling with is to resist the temptation to make your message from one gospel, especially it's if it's a passage where it's you know, there's a witness in all four of the gospels of this of this narrative. Resist the temptation to make that one that message from one gospel a harmonization of all of four of the gospel accounts. Uh, you don't want to feel like, okay, I got to bring in what Matthew said, what Luke said, what John said, and bring all that to bear. I did that a little bit by uh uh interweaving some details from Luke chapter 22 along the way as I preach from Mark 14. But I would encourage you, stick with the gospel you're preaching from. Every gospel writer is making choices in how he tells his story. And he's doing that to emphasize particular theological themes. And so if you start to harmonize all four of them, you can lose the particular emphasis that that gospel writer wants to make. So stay predominantly in the text in front of you when you're preaching from one of the gospels, and especially when you're preaching from a text that has multiple uh multiple witnesses in in the different gospel accounts. So that's that's something that I sort of struggled with as I went along the way, trying to think, okay, how much of other gospels do I bring to bear? I did it in a limited way where I thought the details helped in moving forward what Mark uh was saying. So that's that's the way I approach that. Now I want to move to the main idea and outline of this passage. And uh as with any narrative passage, when you're finding the main idea of the passage, almost always you are finding the main idea by means of what is suggested, by what is implied in the text, because very rarely does a narrative passage begin or even anywhere in the text include a statement of here's what the main idea of this passage is. There are a couple of cases. For example, there's one one parable that Jesus told at the beginning of the parable. It says, Jesus told them this parable that men ought always to pray and not to faint. Well, okay, the main idea of that text is that men ought always to pray and not to faint. So that's a passage of scripture where the text gives you explicitly what the narrative is going to be about. But usually that's not the way it works. Usually, after you've studied the passage thoroughly, you back up and look at the whole passage, and from that you find the main idea that the biblical author is presenting. As I looked at this text, the main idea I saw, I found by not only looking at this text, but even looking at the broader context beyond the denial of Peter, Peter's denial of Jesus, to move beyond that to the resurrection and the restoration that Jesus offered Peter in his failure. So as I looked at that, here's sort of the main idea that I saw in this text. Jesus offered Peter hope on the other side of his failure. That's the main idea I see the text. Jesus offered Peter hope on the other side of his failure. And then the main idea of the sermon would be Jesus offers you hope on the other side of your failure. And in order to find that, you've got to zoom way out because the text itself leaves you without a lot of hope, right? It leaves you with Peter hearing the rooster crow and remembering what Jesus told him and then weeping bitterly. That's where the text leaves you. But we know that's not where this gospel leaves you. The gospel leaves you with Peter being restored. When you zoom out beyond the cross and the resurrection to what Jesus had for Peter on the other side of that, the message of the angel at the empty tomb was to go tell the Lord's disciples and Peter. And uh and then we know from John's gospel that Jesus worked to restore Peter and to give him words of of hope. And so uh as you look at the as you look at the passage, as you're trying to find the main idea of the narrative, it in it helps to sort of zoom out and see what this whole passage is saying and what the theological truth is. And so the the text really dealt with failure. It dealt with Peter's failure. Beyond the text in the context, we find hope through Peter's uh restoration and through Jesus' words to him through his resurrection. So that's the main idea of the passage. Now let's talk a little bit about the outline, because this outline that I used in preaching this sermon is not like what I typically do. It's a little bit different than what I usually do. The outline that I used in preaching this is uh what some homiliticians have called an analytical outline. So talk just I'll talk to you just for a moment about the difference between an analytical expository outline and a keyword expository outline. Most of the time I use a keyword expository outline, and that means I have a main idea and then a keyword that categorizes all of the points of my message, and then each point is in itself a complete statement of theological truth from each section of the text as I move through it that is applicable and that that expresses the supporting idea in that text, in that portion of the text that connects back to the main idea. That's a keyword outline. So if you say, okay, in this text, we're going to notice, you know, four ways to uh conquer the trials in your life. Or if you say in this text, we're going to notice, you know, three steps to showing greater love to your family. That those types of outlines tend to be keyword outlines. This outline is an analytical outline. In an analytical outline, the outline analyzes the main idea and the text by giving the the preacher some handles or a framework to hang your preaching on as you go through. So the points are not uh complete statements, they are not applicable in themselves. Instead, they provide some handles to take you through the text and sort of something to hang the content of your preaching on as you go through. And there's some advantages in that, and there's some challenges that come along with that. So we'll we'll walk through and and and just sort of remind you of how I did the point. So I had three points in this text. The main idea, again, was Jesus offers hope on the other side of failure. And then the three points were this. First of all, I talk about the certainty of our spiritual failure. And then secondly, I talk about the cost of our spiritual failure. And then finally, I talk about the cure for our spiritual failure. You'll notice every one of those points follows the pattern, the blank of blank. Usually an out uh an analytical outline will have that type of pattern, the blank of blank or something something very similar to that. So it's the certainty of our spiritual failure, the cost of our spiritual failure, the cure for our spiritual failure. And those three points help me to analyze my main idea, which is hope on the other side of failure, and also to walk me through the text. And so when I talk about the certainty of our spiritual failure, point one, the certainty of our spiritual failure, I look at Mark chapter 14, verse 30, and how Jesus knew that Peter would fail beforehand, and he predicted that and told him that, how that in itself was a means of grace to Peter, that his failure did not catch Jesus off guard. I talked about all of those things, and I did that underneath the point, the certainty of our spiritual failure. And then I talk about the certainty of our own spiritual failure. Peter was sure to fail. Jesus knew that. The same thing is true for us. We we know that part of what we do and part of how we are as fallen human beings is that we fail, we sin. And so I talk about the certainty. The second point, the cost of our spiritual failure, that really centered on Mark chapter 14, verse 72, where Peter remembered what Jesus had told him. He remembered how Jesus had told him he would deny him, and that then how he broke down and wept. And I talk there about the cost of spiritual failure in our own lives, that when we fail, there's a cost that comes with it. And to make application of that. The third thing, the third point, is the cure for our spiritual failure. Here I moved into Mark chapter 15, verse 1, as Jesus is being delivered to be crucified, and how through going to the cross and then rising from the grave, Jesus provides the cure. He provides the cure for spiritual failure and uh enables us to move beyond our failure into his forgiveness and his hope. So if you think about that, that outline, the points are not complete statements. Uh, the points are do not make, you know, don't assert theological truths. They are simply analytical points that help me to look at my uh my main idea from a variety of different angles and also to walk through this text. So, what are the benefits of an analytical outline? And I'll start by saying the analytical outline is always my second choice. It's always my my first choice is always to have a keyword outline. But I learned along the way as a pastor, uh, you know, I can't always find a keyword outline like what I was taught to do in in seminary preaching class or even what I've taught my students to do. I can't always find that, but I've got to preach every Sunday and I've got to preach that text. So if I can't, if I can't find a way to express the sermon structure in a keyword outline, then my second course of action is to back up and say, okay, how can I do this as an analytical outline? And the analytical outline is usually easier to do. It's usually a little bit easier to do because it's really just providing yourself some hooks to hang your preaching on as you walk through the text. So it's it's a simple uh outline. It's if if you're into alliteration, it's easier to alliterate because you don't have as many words to deal with and you don't have sentence structure to to mess with. You've just got these phrases. And so, you know, my preaching professor told me something that I believe is true. Alliteration always impresses you and your preacher friends more than it impresses anybody else. You know, there's there's there's really there's some there's some mnemonic benefits, some memory benefit in in having an alliterated outline, but there's not a spiritual benefit in it. But I I do it sometimes, and uh, and and an analytical outline is easier to alliterate. There's also a greater degree of flexibility with this type of outline in terms of how much text comes under each point and all of those types of things. Sometimes you can have greater flexibility with this type of outline. So there's some benefits to the analytical outline. There are some challenges. So if you use this type of outline, just be aware of some challenges that you need to overcome. One challenge is to make sure you keep the message applicable because the points in themselves don't have really any application value. So you have to you have to embed the application outside of the outline. So, and and so just be aware of that. Make sure you pay attention to keeping the message applicable. Here's something that goes along with that. Be careful to move out of the historical when you're using an analytical outline. Okay, so going back to this outline. The way I said it was the certainty of our spiritual failure, the cost of our spiritual failure, the cure for our spiritual failure. I've done something deliberately to make this a little bit more applicable and also to move it out of the historical. I could have outlined it this way: the certainty of Peter's spiritual failure, the cost of Peter's spiritual failure, the cure for Peter's spiritual failure. If you preach it that way, it's still accurate to the text, but you've left your whole message in the long ago and the far away. You've left it in the historical. So if you're going to use this type of outline, make sure you move it out of the historical. A lot of times, expository outlines stay in the historical. They analyze the historical framework of what happened in the text rather than moving into the world of the listener and taking the text to the listener. So keep it applicable and move out of the historical. One other challenge, and that challenge is to make sure every point points back to the main idea. And that's true for any type of outline, but certainly when you're doing an analytical type of outline like this, make sure you point back to, refer back to the main idea with every point. And if if your points don't point back to the main idea, you may have the wrong main idea. You may not have identified that correctly. But every point should point back to the main idea. So this was uh an analytical outline, and uh I thought it worked well in taking me through the text, and I thought it worked well. Uh it was serviceable in moving me to the the hope, the cure for our spiritual resurrect uh spiritual failure through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ as I'm taking the listener toward the gospel. So I wanted to talk a little bit about that. Something else with this message, and and this is this is moving from the from the study to the pulpit, and that's my delivery approach, how I deliver this message. So when you listen to me deliver this message, it's important if you if you were to watch it, you'd see, but if you if if you listen, you can probably tell. I'm preaching this message with full notes. Now, again, that's that's sort of my second best uh option. My my favorite option is to preach with minimal notes, if if any notes at all. If possible, my ideal is to preach with a marked Bible, and maybe my points written out in the in the uh margins in front of me and to preach that way. I like to preach that way because it it maximizes eye contact with the congregation, it allows for me to to make adjustments in the moment as as needed and as the Holy Spirit leads, and it uh it creates greater flexibility of movement. It uh it helps me to be more natural in the way I I deliver the message. And so I for a variety of reasons, my my first best option is to preach the the message with minimal notes, if any notes at all. But with this message, I preached with full notes, I preached with. With uh something close to a full manuscript. And there are various reasons why. There's some complexities uh in the way I put the sermon together that I felt like required me to have notes. Uh sometimes it has to do with just what has happened to you that week and uh and how much time you've had to internalize the message. Uh, but more than anything, it was a personal choice for me as a preacher that I felt that week that the best option for me was to preach with fuller notes. And that's something I a conclusion I came to a long time ago. Um every method of sermon delivery that you can name, whether you're talking about impromptu preaching or uh extemporaneous preaching without notes or extemporaneous preaching with notes or uh a manuscript or even memorization, any type of sermon delivery strategy you want to talk about has been used by God and blessed by God with some preacher at some point in time in the history of Christian preaching. Now, that doesn't mean they're all great. In fact, I tell you, impromptu preaching, that'd be like preaching with no preparation at all. I would not commend that to you. I would not commend memorized and recited sermons. But but having said that, every type of preaching you can name has been used of God. So what what I've come to the conclusion is that I need to ask this question as a preacher. What helps me to deliver this message this week best? And and I I just make that decision. Sometimes I'm making that decision on on Saturday evening. Uh, sometimes I'm making that decision on Sunday morning, but I'm asking the question, what helps me deliver this message this week best? And once I answer that question, I go with it. And uh, and and so I've I preached, I preached in sometimes with full notes and sometimes with no notes at all. So let me talk to you a little bit about some things that I found to be helpful when I am preaching with fuller notes. If you're preaching with full notes or with a manuscript, some things to keep in mind. Uh again, before I go any further with this, just to remind you, first best option is minimal notes. But if you're using more notes, what are some things to do to strengthen what you do? First of all, write to be heard, not to be read. If you're preaching from a manuscript, make sure you write to be heard, not to be read. Use short sentences. Avoid long, complex sentences. If you've got a sentence with three dependent clauses in it, turn that into three sentences. Use short sentences. And writing to be heard, not to be read also means repeat things. Because when someone is listening rather than reading, uh, they can't go back and re-relisten to what you've said, not in the moment. If they're listening later on, they can back up the recording and listen again. But but you know, when you're reading something, if you get confused or if you forget the point, you can go back and and read it again. When you're speaking, you have to build in that review for your listeners. So repeat things. Uh think about that. Repeat things. Notice I've said it about three times, repeat things. And then something else, when you're writing to be heard, not to be read, think in terms of simplicity in every way, in every way. Simple vocabulary, simple sentence structure, simple logic and flow to the message. Write to be heard, not to be read. Another thing, if you're using full notes or a manuscript, preach it, don't read it. Preach it, don't read it. It needs to sound like you're preaching something, not like you're reading something. And there's just a difference. And you can tell it. I think one of the advantages of learning to preach with minimal notes is that you learn what it sounds like to preach and not to read. So if you're using full manuscript, great, but preach it, don't read it. And that means having a high level of familiarity with what you're saying, uh, going over it over and over again, thinking through how you're going to use inflection and volume and pace and all of those things in the message, but preach it, don't read it. And then a third thing for preaching with uh with a manuscript or with full notes. Make sure that when you're preaching, that you're interacting with the congregation and not your notes. The interaction should be you speaking to the congregation in front of you, not just interaction with your notes. Sometimes I've seen preachers where like they're having they're having like a high level of interaction with their notes. They're real excited about their notes, you know, they're but they're just looking down at the notes the whole time. So make sure that that energy in delivery is directed toward the congregation and not your notes. Right to be heard, not to be read. Preach it, don't read it, and interact with the congregation, not your notes. And so with this one, delivery for me is a little bit out of out of the ordinary for the way I usually do it, but uh I enjoyed preaching it. And uh, and I felt like uh that the uh the message landed and that it connected, it connected with me, and and and it's connected with the it connected with the congregation as I preached it. Um let me talk as I finish up a little bit about landing the plane. And uh, and man, what one thing about landing the plane is prepare to land the plane. Know how you're gonna finish this message. And in the case of this message, uh, it was very simple to end the message with the cross and the resurrection, because as I moved into the cure for our spiritual failure, I was talking about Jesus going to the cross as as Peter was was continue to experience the cost of his failure and how Jesus was providing that cure. So in this text, the narrative moved us to the cross and resurrection. Every time you preach, though, ask yourself the question how does this text and how does my message connect with the gospel? It does. There is a way that your text connects with the gospel. And so ask that question, how does it connect? And then as you preach the message, having found that connection, call for faith, call for repentance, proclaim the gospel, and call people to saving faith in Jesus Christ as you preach the message. That's part of gospel preaching. Gospel preaching, faithful expository preaching, involves showing how the text connects with the message of Jesus Christ, his death, burial, and resurrection, and free offer of salvation, and then calling people to follow Jesus and to trust Jesus as Savior and Lord. Well, I loved preaching this text. It was just for me a blessing to preach it because of the depth of what happened with Peter and also to know how that connects with us and the fact that we fail and that we often experience those same things that Peter did, failing when we said we never would, failing the Lord who we love with all of our hearts, and and and and yet saying and doing things we never imagined, never dreamed we would say, and then experiencing the sorrow that comes from that, and then to know that that never catches Jesus by surprise, but that through his cross and through his resurrection, he offers us hope beyond our failure. So, 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. If you're enjoying this podcast, please take a minute to share this with a friend in ministry. God bless you, and remember, we're right beside you. Thanks for listening.

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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 flbaptist.org.