"I would sooner a hundred times over appear to be inconsistent with myself than to be inconsistent with the Word of God," said Charles Spurgeon.

The Two Outlines

One morning, driving his family to church, the pastor asks his children, “And why do we need to be quiet in church?” His seven year old daughter pipes up, “Because people are sleeping.” This comical story is truer than many of us teachers or preachers would like to admit. In the colonial days if someone fell asleep during the sermon, a man from the back of the church took a long pointed stick and jabbed the sleeper in the ribs until he woke up. Robert Kirpatrick was not in error when he suggested the poker should have poked the preacher instead!¹

In all truth many preachers are about as interesting as watching wet paint dry. An unenthused, unanimated preacher should reconsider his calling. But there is another reason some communicators bore their audiences to death: the preacher’s hard to understand. When a preacher is no clearer than a muddy river he’ll lose the attention of his audience fast. To be clear is not easy; it means laborious preparation that doesn’t come easily. To be clear means you have to know your text very, very well. And that’s exactly why you outline your passage. An outlined text is a text that has been read, studied, ached over and wrestled with until you know it backwards and forwards, upside down and inside out. This kind of intimacy produces deep understanding which in turn creates clarity in your presentation. And if you understand it, your audience will too.

There are two kinds of outlines: The study outline (exegetical) and the teaching outline (homiletical). The study outline is created first, the teaching outline second. The study outline follows the natural flow of the text, and directly reflects the text’s grammar and structure. However, in most cases the study outline is too rough and cumbersome to teach effectively. It’s lots of raw data, full of nutrition but hard to swallow. What you spent 10-20 hours studying will not be as readily understood by the hearer who listens to your findings for only 30 minutes to an hour. That means you have to package your lesson in the most clear and concise way possible. Some people are deceived into believing that all a teacher needs is good study habits. They pack together these wonderful studies immense with footnotes, cross references, grammar and data. But when they teach it, their audiences blink at the teacher as if he were speaking in a foreign tongue. To use Theodore Roosevelt’s analogy, their lessons are harder to listen to than for a python to swallow a porcupine backwards.

The purpose of the study outline is to help you understand the passage. The purpose of the teaching outline is to help your audience understand and apply the passage. While the study outline is about analyzing the text, the teaching outline is about getting the text into your hearer’s head. Each point of your teaching outline becomes the points in your message.

Preparing a study outline is fairly simple. All you need is careful observation and logical thinking. Anyone can learn how to prepare a study outline because the Bible was written for all believers of all ages, nations, and cultures. But learning how to prepare a teaching outline is like learning how to throw a boomerang. It's 'caught' more than learned by rote because it is an art and not just a science. This is why skills for preparing a teaching outline will be acquired more quickly if you have the gift of teaching or preaching.

How to Create the Study Outline

Let’s say you are asked to teach a Bible study and you have one week to get ready. So you pick Genesis 12:1-3 as the passage you want to teach. As you study the passage, you come to the outlining step. Here’s how to do it:

No matter what you do, remember that context is the essential, invariable, cardinal, absolute, non-negotiable. Always get your context before you outline your passage. It will not only make the outline process easier, but it will make you ten times more accurate. The context for your outline includes the theme of the book, genre, background and setting, and the main point of the passage.

Step #1: Find the main theme of the book.

You can find the theme by reading the book several times. Look for repeated words and repetitive ideas. Keep asking yourself: “What is the intention of the author? What is the main reason he is writing this letter?”

Learn to distinguish major parts from minor parts in the book. Even though every word of Scripture is God-breathed, every part is not equally important. Why are appendixes, forewords, and footnotes the last things people read in a book? Because they are minor. They matter, but not as much as the chapters and conclusion. As you read Genesis you will come upon an ancient soap opera about a man sleeping with his daughter-in-law whom he thinks is a prostitute and later threatens to have her burned for her adultery. This is Genesis 38. What in the world does this have to do with the book of Genesis? Everything! It is a minor event supporting the main theme of God’s amazing grace in the book of Genesis. Through this adulterous relationship God produces the child Perez who is the ancestor of Christ, just to show how in spite of man’s deadly depravity God brings grace and life. When you remember to distinguish major themes from minor ones the text comes alive and all of it applies.

Once you have nailed the theme of the book, jot it down in one simple sentence or phrase. Stay away from long, run-on, compound sentences. They won’t help focus your thinking. If it takes you more than one simple sentence to explain the theme then you have not found the central thought of the book, but more likely, two or three secondary thoughts.

Here’s how you might condense the theme of Genesis: “By His power God creates the world and calls out a special nation through whom He will bless all people.”

Step #2: Identify the genre of the book and passage.

By “genre” I mean “kind.” Just like a newspaper article, novel, and instruction manual are three different genres or kinds of literature, so every book of the Bible has its own kinds. (Chapter three covered this in greater detail.) This includes not only the genre of the book, but the genres found in the passage you are teaching:

• The genre of the book of Genesis is obviously narrative. It’s a story about the founding of the nation of Israel.
• The genre of Genesis 12 is biography. Genesis 12-25 gives us the life of Abram.
• The genre of the immediate passage is dialogue. Notice how it begins: “Now the Lord said to Abram” (12:1). So we have discovered the genre of dialogue inside the genre of biography inside the genre of narrative.

Step #3: Understand the Background/Setting of the passage.

What has just happened, where are the actors, and what is going on? Finding the background and setting not only makes nailing down setting of your passage simple but provides amazing insights for the lesson you are teaching. Genesis 11 just gave us the story of the Tower of Babel followed by the ancestry of Abram. So we know that Genesis 12:1-3 occurs after God has spread people all over the face of the earth who speak in different languages for the first time. We also know that Abram comes from the line of Shem, one of Noah’s three sons (11:10), that Abram marries a woman named Sarai (11:29), and that Abram comes from Ur of the Chaldeans (11:31). Verse 30 give us a very significant piece of information: “Sarai was barren, she had no child.” This fact very strategically ties into God’s covenant with Abram in chapter 12, since the fulfillment of that covenant depends on Abram having a child. (Chapter 7 will talk more in depth about studying the background.)

Step #4: Write down the main point of the passage.

The main point is the one point that has to be in the text for the text to make sense. Everything else could be removed without damaging the meaning of the passage. For Genesis 12:1-3, the main point is, “Go forth from your country…to the land which I will show you.” Everything else hangs on that command. You could take out “And I will bless you,” and the passage would still stand. You could take out, “from you father’s house,” and the passage would still make sense.

Now summarize it. It might look something like this, “God tells Abram to leave his homeland and go to a new land that God will show him.” If you want, you can condense the main point even more: “God tells Abram, ‘Go!’”

Sometimes you will find that the main point is repeated in several synonymous phrases throughout your passage, like in Leviticus 11:44-45. Here, God repeats the command “be holy” many times in different ways. In this case, just paraphrase it into one statement: “God commands Israel to be holy.”

Notice we are moving from a wide circle to smaller and smaller spheres until we nail the text itself. Like traveling to earth in a rocket ship, first you see planet earth, then land and water, then mountain ranges and deserts, then cities and forests, then town blocks and neighborhoods, then buildings and roadways, and finally, people.

Step #5: Outline the passage.

If it’s a short passage, first identify the subject and verb.

This will become the grid for structuring your outline. To identify the subject, just ask the question: “Who is doing the action?” or “What is being discussed?” In Genesis 12:1-3, the Lord says, “Go forth from your country.” Who is to go forth from his country? Abram! So the subject is “you.” Although the “you” is not stated, it is understood. (The subject of a command is always “you” unless the subject is named.)

The verb is the word that gives the action or that indicates being. “George ran to the store.” “Ran” is the verb. It’s the action. “George is funny.” “Is” is the verb. It indicates being.

Here are the main subjects and verbs from Genesis 12:1-3:

Subject	Verb	Verse
(You)	go forth	vs 1
I	will make	vs 2
I	will bless	vs 2
You	shall be	vs 2
I	will bless	vs 3
I	will curse	vs 3
All the nations	will be blessed	vs 3

Then, attach the secondary parts.

Everything else in the sentence will hang on the subject and the verb. For example, here's how it would look for verse 1:

Subject	Verb	Descriptive	Descriptive
(You)	go forth
		from your country
		from your relatives
		from your father's house
		to the land
			which I will show you

Notice that each indented phrase identifies the phrase above it. It is subsidiary to that phrase, meaning it depends on that phrase for its own existence. For example, try reading Genesis 12:1 without the phrase “to the land.” Suddenly, the phrase, “which I will show you” no longer makes sense. Why? Because it identifies the phrase, “to the land,” which means if “to the land” no longer exists, then the phrase, “which I will show you,” no longer has a purpose and loses its meaning.

In the above outline, notice that all the “from yours” explain where Abram is to go from. But the phrase, “to the land” explains where Abram is to go to. The “which I will show you” describes the land: a land which God will show Abram. Once you learn to quickly identify what modifies what, the outline will jump out at you.

Here’s another example taken from a passage in Exodus:

So I have come down to deliver them from the power of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanite and the Hittite and the Amorite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite (Ex 3:8).

In the outline below, notice how each subsidiary phrase describes what it is attached to:

 

Subject	Verb	Descriptive	Descriptive	Descriptive
I	have come
		down	(where He has come)
		to deliver	(why He has come)
			them	(whom He will deliver)
			from the power	(what He will deliver them from)
				of the Egyptians	(who the power belongs to)
		and to bring	(a second reason He has come down)
			them	(whom He brings)
			up from that land	(where He brings them from)
			to a good and spacious land	(where He brings them to)
				to a land flowing with milk and honey	(what this land is like)
				to the place of the Canaanite and the Hittite and the Amorite...	(who inhabits this land)

You don’t have to be a grammar expert to outline the text. All you need to do is understand the relationships of one phrase to the next and you’ll have an outline in no time.

If it’s a longer passage, outline the passage by the subject matter.

When teaching a longer passage, like Numbers 14:26-35, don’t try to outline every phrase like you would with Genesis 12:1-3. Otherwise, you will have more information than you could possibly teach in one lesson. In this case, simply summarize each verse. As you do, an outline will quickly congeal. Here’s an example:

Verses 26-27 – The sin: God knew Israel’s sin

1. 26 – Set up for the dialogue: God speaks to Moses
2. 27a – God is weary of their grumbling
3. 27b – God hears their complaints

Verses 28-35 – The punishment: God punished Israel for her sin

1. 28 – God will bring their wishes upon their own head (cf. 14:2)
2. 29 – Punishment by death
3. 30a – Punishment by not entering the Promised Land
4. 30b-32 – Punishment by others getting to go in (Joshua, Caleb, and the peoples’ children)
5. 33 – Punishment by their children being shepherds in this wilderness for 40 years
6. 34 – Punishment by time (40 years)
7. 35 – Recap of the declaration

Following is an example of a completed study outline for Genesis 12:1-3:

GENESIS 12:1-3

Theme of the book?

“By His power God creates the world and calls out a special nation through whom He will bless all peoples.”

Background/Setting of the passage?

The people at Babel were scattered over the face of the earth (11:1-9).
Abram comes from the line of Shem, one of Noah’s three sons (11:10).
Abram marries a woman named Sarai (11:29) who is barren (11:30).
Abram comes from Ur of the Chaldeans (11:31).
God speaks to Abram (12:1).

Genre?

The genre of Genesis is narrative. Inside that genre is the genre of biography (12-25). Within this biography is the genre of dialogue (God speaking to Abram).

Main topic?

God commands Abram to go to a land He will give him.

Subject	Verb	Verse
(You)	go forth	vs 1
I (God)	will make	vs 2
	will bless	vs 2
	will make	vs 2
you	shall be	vs 2
I	will bless	vs 3
	will curse	vs 3
famliies	will be blessed	vs 3

Here’s the outline:

Subject	Verb	Descriptive	Verse
(You)	go forth		vs 1
		from your country (where from)
		from your relatives (where from)
		from your father's house (where from)
		to the land which I will show you (where to)
I	will make you a great nation		vs 2
	will bless you
	make your name great
you	shall be a blessing
I	will bless those who bless you		vs 3
I	will curse the one who curses you
families	will be blessed in you

End notes

1. Robert White Kirkpatrick, The Creative Delivery of Sermons (Joplin: Joplin College, 1944), 1, quoted in Jerry Vines and Jim Shaddix, Power in the Pulpit: How to Prepare and Deliver Expository Sermons (Chicago: Moody Press, 1999), 292.