This is the on preaching podcast with H.B. Charles Jr.

The podcast dedicated to helping you preach faithfully, clearly, and better.

Good day and thanks for listening to the podcast.

In this episode, I want to talk to you about what to look for in observations.

So, sermon preparation is a two-fold process.

One, you want to get the text right.

Two, you want to get the truth across.

Getting the text right involves Bible exegesis.

Getting the truth across involves homiletical crafting.

In this episode, we're going to talk about how to get the text right.

And fundamentally, what I want to commend to you is to work through the text using the inductive Bible study process that starts by analyzing the details of the text until you come to the general truth that passage proclaims.

The inductive Bible study process is a fourfold process. Observation, interpretation, application, correlation. Observation ask, what does the text say? Interpretation asks, what does the text mean? Application asks, what does the text do? How does the text work?

How does the text apply? And then correlation, how does this text relate to the rest of

scripture? In this episode, we'll talk about how to do observations, what to, more specifically,

what to be looking for when you are doing the work of observations.

And this is big.

Richard Mayhew wrote that the golden rule of the inductive Bible study process is this.

The more time you spend in observation, the less time you will need to spend in

interpretation and the better your results will be.

Now, I admit, when I first read that statement, I was taking a back by it.

I just felt it was an audacious claim. But I'm convinced at this point that May you was right.

The more time you spend doing serious work and observation, the easier it'll make your interpreting process

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