1. Prep of Biblical Messages
(1200 words) (Kate-Turabian format) (footnotes are a must in Kate Turabian) (No Plagiarism) (No Use of Artificial Intelligence)
Expository Sermon Manuscript
The first Sermon manuscript will be from the previous preparations on 2 Timothy 3:10-4:5 for the first didactic expository sermon (Week 5). A manuscript is writing out your entire message from the Introduction to the Conclusion. Take all your research and your assignments and rewrite them into a message, just as if you were preaching. It’s not a research paper, it’s a sermon you plan to deliver one day. Think of this as an opportunity to have this and your second sermon manuscript ready to preach whenever asked, even if you are asked the day before. You have it ready!
2. Prep of Biblical Messages
(400 words) (Kate-Turabian format) (footnotes are a must in Kate Turabian) (No Plagiarism) (No Use of Artificial Intelligence) (Template is attached below)
Weel 3 Assignment: Sermon Structure Assignment II
Scripture to Focus on: 2 Timothy 3:10-4:5
The second step to the sermon structure assignment is the Sermon Summary Sheet with the Outline.
Please use the worksheet as the template for this and the following assignments. This first assignment should come out to 400 words.
3. Prep of Biblical Messages
(350 words for Zoom Summary) (Summarize the Transcript) (Kate-Turabian format) (No Plagiarism) (No Use of Artificial Intelligence)
All right, we have started. I’m going to ring the bell. I think, I don’t know why I’ve never made this little tradition of ringing the bell, so here we go.
The meeting has officially begun. Let’s have a prayer as we start. Thank you, Father, for bringing us here tonight.
Thank you for enabling this amazing technical connection that is not just technical, but it’s personal. And first of all, we know that you are in this meeting space. It’s no difficulty for you.
It’s only a moderate difficulty for us, but you are in the midst, our midst right now, and we claim your presence. We seek your presence. We receive your presence in this meeting and help us to help each other with our comments tonight, with our thoughts, with our words.
And we ask to be open to whatever you are bringing into each of our spirits. So thank you for being with us tonight. And Lord, we come to you with open hands and open minds and receiving spirits in Jesus’ name.
Amen. All right. Well, tonight is the night of illustrations and stories and other things.
And Lord willing, as we go forth, we will discuss illustrations, stories, analogies, parables. We will discuss, what’s the other thing? Allegories. So it should be very interesting as we discuss all these things.
And I hope you, each of you has an opportunity to share some examples from your life, maybe an illustration, an allegory, a analogy, a story, whatever that has really made an impact on you in your life. So it’s a general topic. We all feel that we know something about it, but we’ve been doing some readings and we want to know what is needed to make these forms of communication work.
And so that’s where we’ll be going from this. Now, we know that Jesus used a lot of illustrations, a lot of parables. I think he used some allegories actually in a couple of cases.
And these are forms of communication that have existed probably before the written word, even in human history. These things go all the way back before recorded time. Stories, parables, illustrations.
This is an old form of communication. Now in church history since Pentecost, you could probably say that a lot of people, Christians in church history were illiterate. How did they receive the gospel? Well, they received it by the word spoken and preached.
The word until the 15th, 16th century was controlled by the church and the priests. But they had a lectionary that they used and they went through the Bible every Sabbath, every Lord’s day on Sunday and read some passages from it. And the people had to be really sharp to pick that up because that might be their only chance in years to hear a particular Bible passage.
It had to strike them. And fortunately, the Bible is full of illustrations that really set the hook in your mind. And that’s a good thing because we need the hook to be set in our mind.
Now, it could be argued today, you would think, well, gosh, everyone in the world is basically literate now, knows how to read. Think again. There is a line of inquiry and thought that’s out there among scholars that we may be entering a post-literate age, not in terms of being able to read simple instructions, but to be able to read extended works that people with their devices, their personal devices, are simply learning how to click with their finger and get what they want and have it videoized or in audio.
And they don’t really have to read lengthy things anymore. They’re going to lose the ability to read an essay or to read a book or to read a long article. And so some people are claiming that it might be possible to enter something of a post-literate age with all of our devices and AI thinking for us.
So we shall see. It should be interesting. But what does the Bible do for us? And by the way, sometimes I think to myself, those of us using our finger to click on something on our device, it makes, for some reason, it makes me think of cavemen.
Now, are you familiar with the fantastic drawings that were found in a cave in France that go back thousands and thousands of years? And the cavemen painted these animals on the walls of the cave that look so realistic, you feel like the bull is just coming at you or is moving. They’re amazing pictures. And sometimes our ability to point on the screen and click and get something that we like or want, it makes me think of the cavemen going back to drawing their drawings on the side of the cave with their fingers.
Of course, great artists still do use their fingers sometimes instead of a brush, but that’s another point. So sometimes I wonder how far we have gone. Now, personally, I always have my little cross pin, and it’s a scholar’s pin.
Now, I don’t have a pocket protector like a lot of techie guys from the 60s, but I do have my cross pin. It was given to me as a bachelor party gift by my brother-in-law. And I have kept this same pin for 35, 40 years.
Now, it’s true, I’ve lost it a few times and had to buy a new one and replace it. But it’s the same pin. See, spiritually, it’s the same pin.
But I find when I go to some establishments and purchase something, they want me to draw with my finger to sign. I think this is so prehistoric. With our technology, we’ve managed to go back to prehistoric times and drawing with our finger again instead of a tool that in a more advanced civilization uses tools instead of fingers.
But those are just Dr. Jumper’s random thoughts to share with you tonight. We need to look at all things, whether technological or not, we need to look at them with an evaluative eye. Well, I’m going to start with a story from the scripture.
I’m going to read a few different things tonight. And I want you to listen to this story. It’s in the book of Judges chapter 11.
And you think, the book of Judges, what does this have to do with biblical illustrations? Well, it’s a guy named Jephthah. Jephthah. And he was one of the judges in scripture in the book of Judges.
And he delivered Israel. Unfortunately, he burned his daughter after that. He had a bit of pagan practice in his head.
And it was very foolish and wicked and stupid. But before that, now, Jephthah was a guy who was the son of a prostitute. His daddy was not really his daddy.
He was a single parent kid. And he was put out from the family. His dad’s family didn’t want him.
They actually kicked him out, as you’ll see earlier in the book of Judges 11. And so he was out on his own. Well, he had a lot of skill and he managed to gather a bunch of guys together to him, formed a little army, had some successes.
So when Israel was threatened by the Ammonites, they all came to Jephthah. Now they wanted it. They said, oh, we need you, Jephthah, now that we can’t fight the Ammonites.
And so he cut a deal with them. He said, if you’ll make me your leader, I’ll fight these Ammonites and I’ll defeat them for you. But you have to make me the leader.
So he got his comeuppance. Well, started off, Jephthah sent messengers. I’m 12 of chapter 11.
And this is a diplomatic exchange. Now, in the Iran war right now, we have some diplomacy attempting to go on. And you sort of see the hand of diplomacy in this scripture.
Then Jephthah sent messengers to the king of the Ammonites and said, what do you have against me that you have come to me to fight against my land? And the king of the Ammonites answered the messengers of Jephthah, because Israel on coming up from Egypt took away my land from the Arnon to the Jabbok and to the Jordan. Now, therefore, restore it peacefully. And of course, hidden behind that is, or else.
Because Israel on coming up from Egypt took away my land and says, restore it peacefully. Jephthah, again, reverse 14, again sent messengers to the king of the Ammonites and said to him, thus says Jephthah. Now he’s going to give the king of the Ammonites a history lesson, which is put forth as a story.
Israel did not take away the land of Moab or the land of the Ammonites. But when they came up from Egypt, Israel went through the wilderness to the Red Sea and came to Kadesh. Israel then sent messengers to the king of Eden saying, please let us pass through your land.
But the king of Eden would not listen. And they said also to the king of Moab, but he would not consent. So Israel remained at Kadesh.
Then they journeyed through the wilderness and went around the land of Eden and the land of Moab and arrived on the east side of the land of Moab and camped on the other side of the Arnon. But they did not enter the territory of Moab, for the Arnon was the boundary of Moab. Now, what’s he illustrating here? He’s saying we respected your boundary.
We camped out. We didn’t cross that river Arnon. It’s your river.
We know it. We stayed away. That’s what he’s telling with this story.
Israel then sent messengers to Sihon, king of the Ammonites, king of Eshbon. And Israel said to him, please let us pass through your land to our country. But Sihon did not trust Israel to pass through his territory.
So Sihon gathered all his people together in a camp at Jehoz and fought with Israel. And the Lord, the God of Israel gave Sihon and all his people into the hand of Israel and they defeated them. So Israel took possession of all the land of the Amorites who inhabited that country.
And they took possessions of all the territory of the Amorites from the Arnon to the Jabach and from the wilderness to the Jordan. So then the Lord, the God of Israel dispossessed the Amorites. In other words, it wasn’t us.
We were just the tools, man. We weren’t aggressing. We weren’t doing anything until you did something to us.
The Lord, the God of Israel dispossessed the Amorites from before his people, Israel, and are you to take possession of them? Will you not possess what Chemosh, your God gives you to possess? In other words, he’s comparing the false God Chemosh with the God of Israel. He said, we have a good God. Our God defeated you.
How about your God? What did your God do? And all that the Lord, our God has dispossessed. And by the way, the word Lord there means the Lord of hosts. God has dispossessed before us.
We will possess. Now, are you the current King? Are you any better than Balak, the son of Ziphor, King of Moab? Did he ever contend against Israel or did he ever go to war with them? And then it goes on. So you get the idea.
He’s giving a history lesson. He’s telling a story. He’s thrown a couple of seeds in there.
Number one, we were not aggressors. We were respecting your boundaries. Number two, eventually after he told the story, he said, and our God was the powerful God.
Your God was the God who couldn’t do anything. And then he says, are you better than any of those Kings? You know, we have a lot of Kings in history and do you consider yourself better? Well, just a question I want to ask you, King, before you have a fight. Well, in the end, that King decided, yeah, he was better.
And he fought Jephthah and Jephthah won and delivered the Israelites from that invasion. So how did Jephthah start to handle that emergency situation? He used diplomacy and he used a story. This is just one of dozens, if not hundreds of illustrations in the Old Testament, stories, parables all over the place.
What was the prophet of God that had a child, Jeremiah? And God said, name that child, not my people, because you are not my people anymore. And so the child was a living parable. Now, just think of that poor mom and she’s in the house, the wife, and she has the kids there and she says, not my people, get your hand out of the cookie jar.
I guess they got used to the name, not my people. So all sorts of parables and stories in the Old Testament. Now, I want to know, can any of you think of any of the parables or stories or illustrations or analogies in the Old Testament? I’m just putting it out there, see if anyone can come up with something.
Yeah, go ahead, Eric. It’s similar to the point you just made where naming a child after a certain event had happened and it goes into 1 Samuel. Samuel’s mentor, Eli, who had two sons that kind of took the fat from the offering and kind of used their positions of power to boost themselves.
They die. Their father, Eli, finds out they die. He falls back and dies and his daughter-in-law, one of the wives of his two sons who had died, is giving birth and she names him Ichabod, meaning the glory has departed from Israel.
So that’s kind of another one saying, and that’s 1 Samuel 4 verses 19 through 22. Yes, yes. And that’s a great story.
And of course, Ichabod descended to us into a story from our colonial times, Ichabod Crane. Anyone remember that? And somehow that story with Ichabod, the glory has departed. And that made an impression on the American colonists in those years, so much so that the guy who wrote The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, I think that was it, named one of the characters Ichabod Crane.
So there you go. It was a very memorable thing, the name of that kid. Any other examples? I see some good things in the chat.
Ah, Hosea, thank you. Thank you, David. You looked it up.
Yeah, the issue between, Rebecca brings up the issue between the Israelis and the Palestinians and this is just a fact, okay, that they were offered an even split in 1948 and they turned it down. And every time they’ve been offered, they’ve turned it down. And President Clinton thought he had a good peace arrangement, but then at the very last moment, Yasser Arafat turned it down.
So Israel has always said, we were willing to live with you and you haven’t been able to live with us. And that’s been the story. And I think history proves the story.
And that’s basically the story they tell today. And I’m sorry if you’re a Palestinian, be free, but that’s just not the way it’s working. Let’s see, what else do we have? Leah named her sons to show, this is Fadinia, to show the relief from the pain of rejection she had suffered.
Leah is one of those people in scripture, she didn’t get no respect. And yet God kept blessing her because he was helping Leah all the way through. Go ahead, Eric.
Sorry, I’ve been going through First Samuel recently. So this comes from First Samuel 24. I don’t know if this is the same, but when David spares the life of Saul by a piece of his cloth and showing it to him, the cloth represents his life, like I held your life in my hand and here it is.
This little piece of cloth could have been your life, but I spared you. Yeah, great example. And that is a show and tell kind of a visual help if you’re preaching a sermon that you bring out sometimes an example of the illustration you’re giving.
For instance, Jesus told the, or he mentioned the unwashed cup about the Pharisees. He said, on the outside, you are just whitewashed, but on the inside, you’re full of vile things. Now, during seminary, I was a student pastor at a church, a youth pastor.
And they invited me during the children’s sermon one Sunday, I was supposed to give the children a message on that cup that was filthy on the inside. And so I went and I got some mud. This was in Mississippi, Mississippi mud.
And what else did I get? Coffee grounds, I think I threw a bay leaf or two in, and some really yucky stuff. And just the whole inside of that cup was just gross as I could make it. And so I showed the kids the cup and I said, do you think this is a nice cup? Do you like it? He said, yeah, it looks like a nice cup.
And then I turned it sideways and showed it around to the kids. And they all, they were like, it was so bad, even the kids hated it. And they got the message.
And later, the adults all wanted to say, I want to see the inside of that cup to get that reaction. So, but that was, that was an illustration used by Jesus. And you see that he used illustrations and analogies and parables all the time, didn’t he? How about some other ideas? What are some stories that stick with you from scripture, some illustrations that stick with you? Can be the New Testament or the Old Testament? Yeah, go ahead, Obed.
Yeah, yes, professor. I was looking at 2 Samuel chapter 12, the verse number one to four, Nathan’s parable of the eel lamb. Where the prophet Nathan tells King David a story about a rich man who steals a poor man’s only beloved lamb.
He is a traveler. So I think it’s an analogy of David saying of taking Bathsheba and having Uriah killed. Yeah.
And you see how he got David, David got emotionally involved in that because he thought it was a real case. And he was so emotional, he said, he pronounced a judgment on that guy. And then Nathan dropped the other shoe.
He said, you are the man. Wow. And it cut David to the heart.
That’s one reason that David, I think, instead of being an adulterer and a murderer in that case, whenever he really thought about a sin he had committed, his heart always went to God’s true north. His compass needle of his life always swung back. See, I’m using an illustration right here that’s not in scripture necessarily.
And I don’t know if anyone actually uses compasses anymore. I know my iPhone has a little compass that you can align and it’s a round thing on the screen. But it’s something about David and the compass needle of his life always went back to the right place, even when he had sinned badly.
And that’s what happened in this case. But it took Nathan telling that story to do that, to get him to that point. And Nathan was thinking about this.
Nathan was intentionally misleading him a little, wasn’t he? I have one, Dr. Jumper. Yeah. How about in Numbers 22 with Balaam and the donkey? You’ve got a prophet that’s spiritually blind, animal that sees clearly.
Isn’t it great, right? I just wrote about that in the chat. There you go. You know, when you’re a young boy and someone talks about talking donkeys, it catches your attention.
Yes, yes, yes. It was 40 years before I understood the message. There you go.
Why are you beating me? I’ve always been good to you. I’ve always done what you wanted. Why are you beating me now? I’m protecting you, man.
You got to know your audience. You’re talking to eight-year-old boys, that’s a great story. There you go.
And it stuck with you. Yeah. Well, I’ll read another one, Psalms 80.
This is a cry of lament. This is a lament psalm. And it’s, the psalmist is speaking here to God with a complaint.
You brought a vine out of Egypt. You drove out the nations and planted it. You cleared the ground for it.
It took deep root and filled the land. The mountains were covered with its shade, the mighty cedars with its branches. It sent out its branches to the sea.
That means the Mediterranean. And it shoots to the river. That means the Euphrates River.
Why then have you broken down its walls? So that all who pass along the way pluck its fruit. The boar from the forest ravages it. Now, how’s that for a word picture? The boar from the forest.
And all that move in the field feed on it. Turn again, O God of hosts. Look down from heaven and see.
Have regard for this vine, the stock that your right hand planted and for the son whom you made strong for yourself. They have burned it with fire. They have cut it down.
May they perish at the rebuke of your face, but let your hand be on the man of your right hand, the son of man whom you have made strong for yourself. Don’t you love that messianic reference? Then we shall not turn back from you. Give us life and we will call upon your name.
There’s so much here in these few verses. At the very end there is basically saying, hey, if you will deliver us and give us life again, we’ll call upon your name. Now, that implies that they had not been calling on God’s name, which is the reason that he let the vine be chopped up and ravaged.
But you see how the psalmist is saying, we are the vine. We have the branches. We were amazing.
We covered this whole area of the earth and it was wonderful. But you’ve allowed these enemies to take us over and the boars of the forest. This is after the enemies are gone.
It was bad enough when the enemies are there and now the boars of the forest are rooting around in the ruins. Really bad. What a vivid word picture.
And again, it sticks in the mind and the heart. It sticks with you. Cedric is, yeah, well, and that’s what I was leading to next.
Cedric, thank you very much. The father is the vine dresser and Jesus, the true vine, and we in the branches. Where do you think he got that picture? Do you think Jesus might have been using something from Israel’s history? Cedric, I think you got it.
Yeah. This was not a new picture Jesus was using. He was turning the people back to it.
Who else has a picture from the Bible that stays with you? I have another one. Yeah, go ahead, Tim. How about the widow’s oil that wouldn’t run out? Oh, yeah.
And what did Jesus say about that woman’s oil? How did he interpret that? Well, I think she was about to lose everything, but God multiplied the small amount of oil that she did have. Yeah, that he did. And how did Jesus frame that miracle? Does anyone remember? It’s right at the beginning of his ministry.
Jesus said there were a lot of widows in those years, and the only one that received help was a widow, a Gentile widow. None of the Jewish widows got the help from the prophet Elijah, only a Gentile widow. And for that, the Jews took up stones to stone him.
They took great offense at that. So see that sustaining oil. By the time of Jesus, they felt like, well, God had made a mistake there in scripture.
Of course, Jesus was reminding them what God had done, that God had reached out to a Gentile woman, a widow. And here they are angry that a Gentile widow, I’d be angry that any widow gets help, I wanna know. Way back in history, but Jesus, he managed to get them very angry just by telling that, just referring to a story in the Bible.
That’s a pretty powerful story, isn’t it?