Michigan Camp Meeting 2024: As For Me and My House

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Preach the Word

Cody Francis

01 Giving the Message

02 Preparing the Message

03 Preparing the Message

04 Building the Message

05 Delivering the Message

You are about to enjoy a presentation recorded at the 2024 Michigan Conference Camp Meeting held at Cedar Lake, Michigan.

We pray that the Lord will bless you as you listen.

Father in heaven, we're grateful for the privilege to be able to study together again.

I pray that you will bless all of my friends as they preach and share your message, that you will speak through them.

Okay, so we're looking at delivering the message today and different aspects of delivering the message.

And we're gonna begin with kind of some of the things we didn't get to from you could include it in building, you could include it in delivering, but I want to talk about illustrations because illustrations can be a challenge especially when we are, no let me delete that especially.

Illustrations can be a challenge, period.

And so it's, especially if you're in a church, now, it's different if you're traveling and speaking at different churches.

You have some illustrations that you can use and you reuse them.

When you are at a church and that's where you are, you can't reuse all your illustrations.

And so you have to find new illustrations or make new illustrations.

And so what's the importance of illustrations and how does it help?

Well, when we look at it, illustrations, multiple factors.

1 that we normally think of is that if you don't have illustrations, you will lose people.

Because if you have too much reasoning, just strong reasoning from this to this to this, it will cause people to zone out.

And so what they say is, and this may have changed, with our attention spans with our different technologies decrease.

When I first started doing Bible work, they told us that television programs are about an hour long, you shouldn't go over an hour.

People's attention span is less than an hour now.

And that was the whole time of the Bible study, not just the giving the study itself.

So now we live in a world where we live in shorts, where they're 30 seconds to a minute.

Now, obviously you cannot have, expect to be able to give a sermon in 30 seconds to a minute.

But it does show that the importance of relieving the mind and breaking that attention span just slightly is important.

Otherwise, if you don't, people are going to start taking their own illustrations.

And those illustrations will be what's going on out the window or what's going on in the pew behind them or the cracks on the wall or a phone or any number of things like that.

When we look at Jesus' ministry, most of his teaching was illustration, not all, but most of it was illustration, at least what we have recorded.

Now, I mentioned a couple of days ago that Jesus gave a topical sermon when he went through the law, the prophets, and the Psalms, talking to them the things about himself.

So he did do those lengthy Bible studies as well.

We just don't really have any records of that, other than that, and that's not a record of the sermon.

He used, and even when they're not parables, he used things like, Don't put your treasure in heaven because moth and rust will corrupt and destroy it here.

Illustrations are hard, and good illustrations are even harder.

And so, but you have to give your listeners a break, but even though you have to give your listeners a break, the biblical exposition must still be primary.

Now, why do you think the biblical exposition should be primary?

And if this is God's word to us, people come, they want to hear what God's word is.

And so if we just put together a bunch of illustrations, that can work.

And sometimes you can tell, particularly in like a youth event or something like that, you can tell 10 minutes of an illustration, a story, and then bang, make the point strong with a verse or something like that, or some reasoning from the Scripture.

But in church, you want your biblical exposition to be primary and your illustrations to be secondary, generally speaking.

It is sometimes you can go through a lengthy story and make a point, but that's generally better for other settings, youth events and things like that.

So you have to have illustrations, but how do you come up with illustrations?

Purpose of, or actually before that, purpose of illustrations?

Illustrations makes truth concrete instead of abstract.

We were talking yesterday about the incident in the life of Corrie 10 Boom and how she didn't want to forgive.

You can talk about forgiveness all day, right?

But when you tell a story like that, does it make it practical?

It brings home to the audience the experience.

Most of the time you don't have amazing illustrations like that, but there are times, and when you do, use them.

Another 1 from Corrie 10 Boom about the being thankful for everything.

You remember when her sister started giving thanks for the fleas in the room?

And Corrie 10 Boom's like, "'This is too much.

"'I can't give thanks for the fleas in the room." And then come to find out the guards left them alone because there were fleas in the room and it really was something to give thanks for.

So a story like That is going to make us point very strong.

You're not always going to have stories like that.

You're not always going to have illustrations like that.

But you still need to give a break in some reasoning and make it concrete instead of abstract.

And so it's much easier if you think about giving thanks for fleas in a concentration camp, is there anything that we can't give thanks for, right?

And so it helps us to assimilate the truth that is being taught.

I ask you, how many of you remember a sermon from a year ago?

What about an illustration from a year ago?

Do you think you might be able to remember an illustration from a year ago?

You know, I read, I'm going through right now, we're developing, we're working on massaging an evangelistic series for our conference-wide evangelism next year, which I'll be talking more about Saturday night.

But I'm going through some of these sermons, and I not only have heard the illustration many times, but I can probably tell you where that came from too.

So it's, you remember stories, we remember illustrations.

And so if you can have a story or an illustration that is memorable, it's going to help the truth to be remembered hopefully with it as well.

And not only just your testimony, but your day-to-day experience as well.

And so, and I'm going to talk about some, those are very strong because they're very real.

So like last night, Elder Finley talking about his passports and things like that, that's an illustration he was using, and it was his personal experience.

It's engaging, it's interesting because it's a story, but then he says, you've got a passport to heaven.

And so, your testimony is a wonderful thing, but also your daily experiences is a wonderful thing to draw.

There's some caution that we're going to get to when we look at wrong use of illustrations.

And what we've just been talking about, makes truth impressive to the memory.

So now I will, I'll mention this again, but I do want to say now and emphasize this, if people only remember the illustration, But they don't remember the truth that is being illustrated by the illustration.

You want the truth that is to be remembered.

Now the story may be the way they remember it, and that's okay, but you don't want to have an illustration just for story value.

And so I would say it's better not to do an illustration rather than tell some stories that don't really fit in.

Sometimes you're preaching and a story comes to your mind and then you're struggling to try to connect it.

Series

Preach the Word

05 Delivering the Message

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

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Mastering Your Anxiety

02 Mastering Your Anxiety

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Reasons to Believe

05 The Resurrection of Jesus Christ

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Preach the Word

02 Preparing the Message

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Interpersonal Relationships - The Art of Hospitality Part 1

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Preach the Word

01 Giving the Message

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Emmanuel Institute - Ignite Your Church

Ignite Your Church - Part 9: The Implementation Guide

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Studies in 1 Corinthians

03 Sexual Immorality in Corinth

53m

Christ and the Heavenly Sanctuary

04 The Day the Devil Dies

1h 4m

Prophetic Preaching and Persuasive Appeals for Decision

04 Where to Preach Powerful Biblical Appeals

55m

From Shame to Grace

05 A Biblical Journey of Healing

1h 1m

Come Home - Transforming Your Family in Christ

01 Busy Parents’ Time with God

41m

Sound Doctrine