How to Preach a Sermon Series on Deuteronomy
By J. Gary Millar
Preaching Deuteronomy faithfully is one of the Bible’s great homiletical challenges—here is a practical framework for tackling it.
Those who want to teach or preach Deuteronomy to God’s people effectively and faithfully face particular challenges.
Structuring Your Series
Breaking up any book (especially a longer one) is best done top down—that is, by breaking the book into large sections along the major seams of the text, and then continuing to subdivide those large sections into a roughly equal number of talks, depending on the needs of the group you are teaching at that time.
So for Deuteronomy, the text (I believe) falls into three large sections: 1–11; 12–26; 26–34.
If I were preaching a nine-week series, my default would be to have three talks on each section, if a twelve-week series, approximately four per section, and so on. However in this case (and given the fact that preaching chapters 12–26 is so hard), I would veer toward having only one or two sermons on the legal sections.
So what then would, say, a ten week sermon series look like for me?
- Week 1 Chapters 1–3
- Week 2 Chapter 4
- Week 3 Chapters 5–6
- Week 4 Chapters 7–11
- Week 5 Chapters 12–26 (part 1)
- Week 6 Chapters 12–26 (part 2)
- Week 7 Chapters 27 & 28
- Week 8 Chapters 29 & 30
- Week 9 Chapters 31 & 32
- Week 10 Chapters 33 & 34
If the series needed to be extended, the logical place to expand would be in chapters 7–11.
The Challenge of Preaching Deuteronomy
There are several quite obvious challenges in preaching Deuteronomy, that, although easy to spot, can be quite difficult to overcome:
1. Dealing with The Collection of Laws
The longest collection of laws in the Bible is hard to preach. Some parts are easier than others to preach on (e.g., 17:14–20; 26:1–11), but it is still a daunting task to attempt to understand the sprawling vision of these provisions.
2. Covering Longer Sections of Text
In all but the most biblically literate congregations, a slow meander through Deuteronomy is going to be hard to pull off, especially when one thinks of the morass of laws.
3. Preaching “Preaching”
Perhaps the most significant challenge is that the text of Deuteronomy is already in sermonic form. That introduces a layer of complexity that we aren’t used to. The primary requirement of a “sermon on a sermon” is to let the voice of the original sermon be heard, without explaining it to death.
4. Dealing with Defeater Beliefs
Some things in Deuteronomy are so-called defeater beliefs. A defeater belief is something that, unless it is resolved, will lead to people refusing to come to Christ or even to think through the wider implications of the message. The classic defeater belief in this part of the Bible is the judgment on the Canaanites.
5. Avoiding Legalism
When dealing with a text that is largely exhortatory on the one hand and legal on the other, it would be remarkably easy to end up handling neither particularly well. It is incredibly hard not to send people away with the sense that we just need to try hard and do our best, rather than allowing the riches that God himself has given us to inform our thinking and empower our response.
6. Preaching Christ and the Gospel from Deuteronomy
How do we preach Jesus from Deuteronomy? This of course is the ultimate challenge: to do this creatively and in a way that flows out of each text slightly differently, capturing readers in an inexorable flow to Christ, while remaining both true to the text and God-honoring.
This article has been adapted from J. Gary Millar’s commentary on Deuteronomy in the Evangelical Biblical Theology series, published by Lexham Academic, where he addresses how Deuteronomy calls God’s people to choose life in him and believe that he has already given us everything we need.
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J. Gary Millar is principal of Queensland Theological College, Brisbane, Australia. He is the author of several commentaries and books, including Now Choose Life: Theology and Ethics in Deuteronomy and Calling on the Name of the Lord: A Biblical Theology of Prayer.
