I was recently coaching a church staff member from a local congregation and we decided to have our discussion in the church library. I have been working with her on the topic of leadership and before we were to get started, she had to make a quick detour and have a brief conversation with someone in the lobby.
While she was out, I took the opportunity to peruse the shelves and see what books were there. I noticed what I thought was a set of commentaries in one of the bookcases. However, it turned out that there were a number of copies of the same paperback book. I guess that they are used in teaching classes or maybe they are available for anyone who wants to have a copy.
The name of the book is the same as the title of tonight’s post, “Finding God in the Verbs.” Admittedly, this seems like a strange book title but for those of us who have gone to seminary, I’m sure that it brings back memories. Specifically, you have to attend all kinds of classes and among them there are a series of lessons on how to write a sermon and, even more importantly, how to preach it.
One of the best pieces of advice I was taught was to always look for the verbs in biblical passages. Perhaps this sounds very crazy to many of you, but I was taught to always look to the verbs to find God; and what He would have us do with the verse in question. In fact, and I don’t want to get too deep into the weeds here, the verbs are the main points of the sermon and participles are the supporting elements of each main point.
Now, I confess that I was pretty terrible in English grammar. It’s always been a difficult subject for me. However, when I first started to learn Greek, the grammatical construction of each verse was something that I had to learn in concert with vocabulary. Consequently, I know much more about Greek grammar than I ever learned in English class. I’m still not very good at it but I can recognize verbs, nouns, participles and even infinitives. But that goes beyond tonight’s lesson. We are focused on verbs – action verbs. That means, God wants us to focus on implementing the action associated with what He is trying to teach us through the Holy Spirit and the pages of the Bible.
Action verbs are those things that most of us learned about in early elementary school – words such as run, jump, walk, talk and just about any other action word that you can think of. Other verbs, called static verbs, are those works that don’t necessarily call us to action. But God wants us to focus on the actions we should take to spread the Good News and knowledge of Jesus.
I have probably made it sound much easier than it was in my classes on sermon construction and preaching from the pulpit. But I hope that you get the idea. Please consider reading the Bible looking for the action words. That’s where the golden nuggets are found.
Our verse for tonight is none other than the Great Commission. It is the verse where God commands us to obey His instructions to spread the Good News. The apostle Matthew tells us, in Matthew 28:18-20, “Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Bold words are highlighted for illustration).
In this passage, Jesus instructs the apostles to go, make, baptize and teach. That makes quite a sermon, doesn’t it! That’s the essence of what we are to do to advance the kingdom of God on earth. We are to go, not to be passive… Then, we are to take the next step and open the Scripture. Baptism, an act of obedience follows and finally, to teach them more about the Good News of Jesus.
My encouragement this evening is that God has a plan for us and you can depend on the fact that you can always locate our mission in the action verbs of Scripture. Try it sometime – you won’t be disappointed! My prayer is that we will pay attention to the actions that we are to do in response to our commitment to Jesus as His followers. Have a great day in the Lord, grace and peace…