When Sermons Won't Structure Themselves: Three Case Studies in Sermon Structure from Matthew's Gospel

Among expositional preachers and homileticians, it is often argued that truly expository sermons receive their structure from the text being preached. Many biblical texts, especially those in didactic passages, present such obvious structure that this rule is often the most natural approach to sermon structure. However, the preacher often encounters a text that either bears no obvious structure or is arranged in such a way that its structure is not helpful for presentation. This paper will demonstrate that certain types of biblical texts ought to be presented with an alternative arrangement than that found in the text. Three passages from the Gospel of Matthew will be examined as test cases: the dense text (Matthew 5:3-12), the circular text (Matthew 13:44-46), and the episodic text (Matthew 14:1-12).