Back in 2009 I came across this blog post on Reformation 21 from Sean Lucas commending the ministry of Tony Merida, particularly his book on homiletics, Faithful Preaching: Declaring Scripture with Responsibility, Passion, and Authenticity.

I soon purchased the book, read it, and my preaching has never been the same.

THE BIG IDEA IN EDWARDS      

Faithful Preaching contains no small number of useful takeaways. Clarity and practicality bleed through on every page. But the paradigm shaping moment, for me, came in his chapter on unifying the redemptive theme of every sermon. There he says every message should have a “Main Point of the Text (M.P.T.)” and “Main Point of the Sermon (M.P.S).”

Now, an emphasis on “big idea” sermons of course isn’t unique to Merida. My early pastoral years were spent on staff at a church influenced by Andy Stanley and other church-growth practitioners. In Communicating for a Change Stanley and Jones say every successful sermon will be a “one point sermon.” But the rub for me was how pragmatic the tone felt. “Do this,” the popular teaching seemed to say, “and your sermons will reach today’s listener.” So I did what many prideful young pastors have done throughout the centuries, eschewed the teaching wholesale.

Eventually, at a time when the church-growth influences were sapping my soul’s joy in ministry, I discovered the preaching of Jonathan Edwards. It didn’t take for me to realize his model of preaching, quintessentially “Puritan” in its method, was something like old-school Big Idea Preaching. Maybe there was something after all to Stanley’s belief that sermons should only have one point. I saw that Edwards’ sermons offered one main “doctrine,” which we might anachronistically call a main point. And so it was in God’s kind providence the New England man and his Puritan forebears served as plowmen for my ministry, tilling the soil for convictions soon to grow.

One could say, “What Edwards planted and the Puritans watered, God grew through Merida.”

MAIN POINT INSTRUCTION

When Faithful Preaching arrived I believed having a unifying idea/sentence/point to every sermon was the right way to go, I just didn’t know how to do it. Merida thankfully cut through the morass of my mind with his M.P.T. & M.P.S. scheme.

Merida says, “Two essential stages are involved in unifying the theme of an expository sermon. We should first identify the main point of the text (M.P.T.). The M.P.T. is determined through careful exegesis of the selected passage. Next, we should develop the main point of the sermon (M.P.S.) – in view of the redemptive elements in the text and our particular audience and occasion.”

The M.P.T. is a past tense statement about what the text meant in its historical context. Merida says there are five reasons to use a M.P.T.:

1. To preach with authority you need to know first what God intended to say in a particular text.
2. Interpreting the selected text and stating it in a sentence is often the hardest part of preparing an expository sermon.
3. Until the main idea has been identified you cannot develop the sermon.
4. Most pastors are very busy. If you can determine the main point of the text early in the week, then it will help with the development of the sermon when you have time later.
5. Pastors are often very tired and weary. Hopefully, determining the M.P.T. will be a dynamic spiritual experience. . . . it will help get the text inside of you.

The M.P.S. is a present or future tense application of the M.P.T. stated in a single sentence. Merida offers a few benefits of a M.P.S:

1. It ties us to the biblical text.
2. It provides unity to the sermon. A main point of the sermon helps us determine what to include and what to cut, in order to make it a coherent whole.
3. It provide purpose to the sermon. As expositors, we are not merely giving a historical lecture about a passage of Scripture. We intend to have people respond to the text in some way.
4. A M.P.S. with a redemptive-thrust (think Christ-centered) points the hearers to the nature and work of our glorious God.

PUT SOME HANDS AND FEET ON IT

Merida provides several examples of what this might look like in practice, here are just two of them:

MPT for Joshua 1:1-9: God encouraged Joshua to be strong and courageous in leading the Israelites into Canaan by relying on His presence and abiding upon His word.
MPT for Joshua 1:1-9: We can have strength and courage to serve God because of His presence and His abiding word.

MPT for Ephesians 4:17-24: Paul instructed the Christians in Ephesus to stop living like unbelieving Gentiles and start living out their new identity in Christ.
MPS for Ephesians 4:17-24: We are to not live like unbelievers because we are new people in Christ.

THE NECESSARY CAUTION

Any conversation about this philosophy of preaching needs to mention its greatest danger: reductionism. Our present evangelical climate is very good at reductionism. “Exhibit A” is the statement of, “It’s all about Jesus,” or, “The gospel is everything.” Such sentiments are true, but they don’t go far enough or at least as far as they could. We must ask, “Why is everything about Jesus and His gospel?” The right answer, it seems to me, is because He restores the sinner to his created purpose of communion with God. So we can easily offer big ideas that don’t always capture the whole picture.

Big idea sermons are often terrifically memorable and wonderfully cohesive, but they can also become an mere exercise in reductionism. Not every text has an irreducible minimum. We dare not fit God’s word into a straightjacket scheme.

KEEP IT SIMPLE SMARTY-PANTS

With that cautionary caveat understood it does seem, from my vantage point, big-idea preaching is the wisest way to obey the great apostle’s command, “Preach the word” (2 Tim. 4:2). That imperative has the apostolic feel of modern rhetoric’s favorite acronym – K.I.S.S – doesn’t it?

Preacher, let’s keep it simple. Let not your one point sermons smell of pragmatism, but of man who has seen the silver thread of unifying truth in every text. Let our big ideas flow from souls so saturated with the selected text that we tell our congregations the main point at the beginning and by the end they think, “Oh yeah, that’s clearly the main point.” May we preach the word with skillful simplicity.