How to Build a Message
Hopefully, you have already read the helpful articles in this series on practicing good hermeneutics and utilizing curriculums well and you now understand that the best place to start your teaching process is with the biblical text itself, to carefully think through how to observe, interpret, and apply the passage. Doing this well shapes your lesson formation and the spiritual impact it will have on you and your students.
So, now what? You have done the hard work of reading the text and unearthing its meaning. You have considered what trusted resources have said about the passage. You may even have a solid curriculum to start from. You have enough pages of notes, cross references, quotes, and illustrations to teach for a couple of hours, yet only 35 minutes (give or take) to communicate it. Where do you start? How do you take what you have studied and repackage it for your students? Here are some guiding principles that have served me well.
Pray for Wisdom
One of the most important steps in preparing to teach is to pray for your students before and during your preparation process. Teaching is not merely an intellectual exercise; it is a spiritual one, and spiritual tasks require spiritual power and wisdom.
Pray that God would open their hearts to receive His truth, that the Spirit would convict, encourage, and transform them, and that if there is something you are missing that would bring greater glory to Christ and greater clarity to His Word, that God would bring it to mind as you prepare and remove what might distract from those things.
Remember, your goal is not simply to deliver information; it’s to faithfully present Christ and His Word. Good preparation matters, but ultimately it is God who gives understanding, changes hearts, and bears fruit through the teaching of His Word. We need His help.
Get to the Point
Every teacher should ask themselves: how do I make the most of the time I have with students? For many, the answer is a “kitchen sink” approach, where everything you could say, you end up saying. This is always a struggle, no matter how experienced you are. It’s rooted in a genuine desire to teach well; the problem is, before they realize it, the lesson time is almost over and they have only made it through what they assumed would be the first ten minutes of material. At that point, the temptation is to speed up and cram in as much information as possible while parents are arriving. The end result often feels rushed, disconnected, and difficult for kids to follow.
You will be tempted to say everything that could be said about a passage. But let me encourage you with this: your time is better spent not saying everything, but saying the most important things in multiple ways. The goal of your lesson should be to communicate the main point of the passage in ways students will remember; that requires narrowing your approach to highlight what’s most important. Repetition and clarity are often far more effective than pure volume of content. Don’t give them a list of points (most of which they will likely forget); make the most important point memorable.
Focus your Content
Where many lessons go wrong is where they focus their attention. Because want to make lessons relevant to our students’ lives, we can be tempted to stray from the text in trying to make more of our content about application. However, your students’ immediate felt need is not the primary purpose of the text. Starting with their felt needs does not provide a meaningful foundation upon which to build an effective Scriptural lesson. The main goal here is not to give them what you think they need, but to show them why the text matters.
The three most important things you can communicate from a text are:
The main idea of the passage.
How the passage points us to Christ.
How the passage helps us grow in Christ-likeness.
If you want an alliteration: the Message, the Messiah, and the Motivation. In your time, if you can clearly communicate the primary message of the text, how it points to Jesus, and how it motivates them to be more like Him, you have done well. If students leave remembering those three things clearly, you have accomplished far more than simply getting through your notes. Good lesson building aims for transformation over sheer quantity of content.
Quick Example: 1 Corinthians 6:12–20
The Message
Freedom from the Law is not freedom to sin. It is about being set free from slavery to sin so that we can truly love and glorify God.
The Messiah
Jesus repeatedly taught that “the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27). The Pharisees had turned God’s law into a burden that enslaved people to self-righteousness while neglecting the point of it all: to help people dwell with God in freedom. What Jesus offers through His death and resurrection is for people to be united to God through Him, setting them free to live in newness of life.
The Motivation
Are they using their freedom in Christ to become more enslaved to sin, or to live rightly related to God and others? Are their choices helping them fight sin and point others toward Christ, or are those choices quietly allowing sin to have mastery over them?
Respond from the Text
The New Testament commands teachers to both proclaim truth and refute error. We are to “give instruction in sound doctrine and rebuke those who contradict it” (Titus 1:9). Truth must be taught clearly and lies must be exposed. Considering the three content focuses above, how can you model both of these practices well in your lesson?
Consider “The Message” section. A lie this passage might help expose could be: “God does not care how we live because Christians are no longer under the Law.” The truth is: “This passage teaches us how to live faithfully in light of the new nature Christ purchased for us.” Paul models this concept in Romans 6: “Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!” (Romans 6:15). Grace frees us from slavery to sin so that we can become slaves of righteousness (Romans 6:16-18).
In the “Messiah” section, the lie could be: “Jesus found favor with God based on His works, so I’m going to find my righteousness in keeping the law too.” The truth is that Jesus kept the Law perfectly and therefore was righteous., but it’s only when we trust in His righteousness by faith that we are counted as righteous before God.
In “The Motivation” section, a lie might be: “I’m free to continue in my sin because Jesus has paid the price.” Truth: Jesus has set you free from sin and death, so use your liberty to help set others free as well. As you prepare your lesson, ask not only, “What is the truth this text teaches?” but also, “What is the common lie this truth corrects?” Helping our students recognize truth and error can equip them not only to understand God's Word but to develop biblical discernment.
Structure the Lesson Clearly
There is much flexibility in the way a lesson is organized; every teacher will have a different structure. Some may choose to work verse by verse and explain the main points throughout the lesson. Others may work through a larger passage, an entire chapter, or even a book of the Bible, pulling out major themes of the passage within the broader context.
One teacher may prioritize unpacking the meaning of the text, while another may lean more into application and helping students understand how to live rightly. The more you teach, you will learn how to do this best to minister to your students. The important thing to remember is that whether you have highly structured outlines, or just a simple couple of points and supporting comments, structure your teaching notes in such a way that you know where you want to end up and how to get there.
Conclusion
When you teach, you are not only teaching the content of your lesson; you are teaching students how to read the Bible for themselves. When you are able to unpack God's Word in the right way, students begin looking for more than mere moral guidance or solutions to their immediate needs; they begin to see how their lives fit into God's redemptive plan. That perspective does more than change behavior; it transforms their entire outlook on life, and shapes how they see their purpose and identity moving forward. And that’s the point: that they would see the truth of God’s Word, be drawn into a knowledge of His Son, and that they would be forever changed. Make that your priority, then trust God to accomplish it.