SERMON NOTES

The top shelf: THE SERIES OF MATTHEW

Romans, Acts, 1 Corinthians

Ephesians, and Philippians,Revelation

General Messages 1980-87

Sermon Notes from Matthew 5-6
SERMON NOTES

I do have several sermons from my father. Some are hand written and some are typed. Dad must have written these in the 1940's. I could hardly read them, but I am glad I have them.

I have my notes from Roanoke Baptist Temple in 1963-1966 on Psalms, Revelation, and Galatians. They were printed by hand. All my notes were hand printed on paper, or what ever I could get my hands on to write on.

Then in 1983 I went to the Shepherd Conferences and as I was sitting next to John MacArthur at Grace, I actually took his Bible from him, and I viewed his sermon notes he was going to use that night in the conference. That was amazing. Hand written notes. And a rather large manuscript at that.

So I thought, "I can do that." I came back and I took regular typing paper, five sheets and folded them in half, that made a possibility of 20 half sheets of notes. Then I placed a cover sheet over on top with the name of message, scriptures, date and sermon number. Then I numbered the half sheets, and by the time I had finished Matthew, the number was 40.256(because Matthew is the 40th book and there were 256 sermons) and 3400 pages.

I wrote out the sermon as I would want to deliver the message. I had taken short hand in high school, and believed that was dumb at the time. How dumb I was. I did use some short hand.

I also started printing rather than writing. I discovered that I could read the notes better if I could clearly see the words. (smart thinking). Secondly I had to spell the words right. Now I am not a very good speller, but I know when a word is correctly spelled. I would get up to preach and notice a word was misspelled and was confused. So I had to made sure the word was correct. I had to call Charity a lot in those days.

Those first years while teaching Matthew, I was learning this method of preaching verse by verse with John MacArthur's video series on "EXPOSITORY PREACHING " 1984 seven volumes.

• (I still have the series) I also was gleaning from John's preaching on Matthew as well. Note photo I scanned)

Matthew was the first series I preached in depth, verse by verse, every verse in every chapter, and sometimes the periods and commas. While every message was from the KJV I would study from as many resources as I had at the time.

As I was learning, and following the series of Matthew, I began to use more technical books. Who needed Colin Brown three volumes "Dictionary of NT Theology." Or Georgey Bromiley "Theological Dictionary of the NT." or Merrill C. Tenney's seven volumes"Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible." Wasn't the KJV's Dickson Study Bible enough?

• Some were saying it's not fundamental and spirit led if you study from those resources. I used Oliver B. Greene, and John R. Rice, and Harry Ironside and others. They were rather good resources for study, and my Seminary notes were good too.
  

Then I moved into Acts, Romans, I Corinthians, Ephesians, Philippians, I Timothy, and I Peter, and Revelation, over the next twelve years, and had a few good resources to study from. Then I tried to footnote most of the references I used at the bottom of the page.

This article was to be about sermons notes. I did read the book, "How To Preach Without Notes." I didn't read it very well, I might say.

While it is true I always read the scripture from the 1750's KJV, that doesn't mean I didn't study from other translations and the Greek (as much as I knew). I have addressed this issue in previous articles so I won't go into that again.

Every message that is pictured above was hand printed, word by word. The picture was taken last week in my home. Charity was nice to let me use the book case to showcase my sermons.

What I discovered, I usually was not able to finish one manuscript in one sermon. Usually two messages were required to finish. I believed while I was preaching I would finish what I had written. What was good, as you teach verse by verse, you could stop just about any place and pick up next week. That was good too.

FOOTNOTE: I used the Pilate white fine print pen to print the sermon.

I would study from a lot of resources during the week, listen to John preach, study notes, then put the message down, and then when I delivered the message on Sunday, I had a lot of notes in my mind that I wished I had put down on paper as well. I said a lot of material that was not in my notes. But that was not the intent. I always allowed as it were, the Holy Spirit to direct my thoughts as I delivered the message.

• Drafted from my experience 1980-1996. First Baptist Church, Altoona, Kansas. Proof read by Charity Whisnant Photos taking June 25, 2008 Photo on right: Pastor/Teacher Charles E. Whisnant, Pastor's office. I like that study office.