Every text of Scripture is meant to wow us. It may be a wow akin to coming upon the Grand Canyon, or it may be more like the wow of a kiss after a long absence. It might be like your wow over an athlete's catch or more like your first impression of the Vietnam Memorial. But every text of Scripture—if we probe and ponder enough—has a wow factor.

Students of Scripture know what it is like to open what looks like a very oyster-ordinary passage only to find within an unexpected pearl of exquisite holy beauty. Even long-time students of the Bible will be surprised to find from time to time a promise or a picture in God's Word that is stunningly new. Other times, it takes long hours of persistent study to begin to lay bare the ingenuity of divine logic in one paragraph, or a theme running under the surface of Scripture like a vein of gold. Still other times it slowly dawns on us that this familiar text has a fresh application we'd never thought of before, like finding a new use for old medicine. But however the wow comes to us, that wonder must find its way into our sermons.

There is a wow in every text because, first of all, the Bible is always counter-intuitive to the natural mind. Every week I think to myself, I'd have never thought of this if God hadn't put it in this wonderful book. Furthermore, God regularly deals in wonders: "'No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him'—but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit" (1 Corinthians 2:9-10). David had the wow factor in mind when he wrote in Psalm 9:1, "I will tell of all your wonders."

Identify the wow factor

As I study a text, I keep my eyes peeled for the wow in the text. Where will I pause in the logical development and take God's people for a break at a scenic overlook? Where will we get out of the car, stand with our mouths open, and snap some pictures before we move on to the application or the next paragraph of the text. How do I choose the overlooks? Try these questions:

• What in this text grabbed me as I studied? What stirred my heart and prompted my worship? Don't be too quick to settle on your wow; sometimes the most wonderful treasures are only found after a long journey of study and prayer, and some frustrating dead-ends.
• Where are the feelings in the text? (See the three-part article by Kenneth Quick, "Your Text Has Feelings.") Recently, when I was preaching from 1 Peter 1:19, the very expression, "the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect," seemed to require that I help us all feel how "precious" Christ's blood is. Precious is a word that has feelings. If they only understood the doctrine, but did not resonate with Peter's wonder, the text was not well-served.
• Have I asked God in prayer what he most wants his people to feel from this text? Where would he insert a painting or poem, fireworks or a story? When a passage seems bland to me, I especially need to pray that God would give me eyes to see and ears to hear the wow. Remember: part of application is making sure people feel what God intended them to feel through this passage.

Stirring up wow

The challenge is when over-familiarity has leaked most of the wow out of a wonderful truth. That's why I dread Christmas sermons. It's hard to find the wow again. We may face the problem when we come to a text about worship, heaven, salvation, or the love of God. With a furtive look this way and that, we admit to ourselves that this great God-Word actually feels, well, kind of ho-hum. And we know that if it is ho-hum to us, we'll have a dickens of a time turning it into fireworks for our congregation.

Wow doesn't come easily to people. We are often spiritually autistic, seeing truth with dispassionate analysis. The preacher cannot only be a professor; he must also be a poet, painter, and prophet, determined to stir hearts for God's sake. Besides the regular equipment of rhetoric (voice inflection, pauses, vigorous words, earnest sincerity, thoughtful development, and so on), I have found that these tools work for me:

• Lay open the text's divine logic. We know for certain that God's logic is always foolishness to the natural mind yet wonderfully sensible to the spiritual mind. When your text has a line of divine reasoning in it (like Paul so often uses), you might first set out the way the world reasons ("Wouldn't you think that dying is losing, that suffering is joyless, that God measures our lives by the rules we keep?"). Then lay open the gospel logic right there in the text, how Gospel A + Gospel B = Gospel C. Be like the teacher who shows first graders that mixing blue and yellow paint makes green.
• Fill in the colors of Bible stories. It's easy for some of us to go overboard when we get our hands on a Bible story, but we need imagination sometimes to help people see the wow in a story. Zora Neale Hurston wrote of hearing an old-time African-American preacher named C. C. Lovelace describe how Jesus stilled the storm:

  And he arose
  And de storm was in its pitch
  And de lightning played on His raiments as He stood on the prow of the boat
  And placed His foot upon the neck of the storm
  And spoke to the howlin winds
  And de sea fell at His feet like a marble floor
  And de thunders went back in their vault
  Then he set down on the de rim of de ship
  And took de hooks of his power
  And lifted de billows in His lap
  And rocked de winds to sleep on His arm
  And said, "Peace be still."

  
  I doubt I could ever come up with a description as beautiful as that, but when I read that, I realize I usually give up too quickly.
• Open wide the text's metaphors. The metaphors of Scripture often carry their own wow, but we have a scholar's tendency to dissect biblical metaphors with our Greek word studies, rather than simply letting them paint their thousand-word picture. A friend commented that biblical metaphors are like a silver bullet in a sermon, but we're more likely to take the bullet apart and show folks the casing, powder, and lead, rather than shoot it.
  
  Recently I was preaching to preachers from Hebrews 12, where we're told that Christians come, not to Mt. Sinai's Law, but to Mt. Zion's grace. The writer piles on descriptions, one being, "You have come to God, the Judge of all." Rather than explaining, I tried to paint a picture: "Take God's people to stand quietly in the Courtroom of the Almighty. Tell them of the drama there—their relentless and eloquent Accuser and of his air-tight case against them. Tell them of the Judge's unbending justice, and of sin's certain death sentence. Then tell them of justification and the substitutionary atonement, tell them of the Judge's genius in satisfying his own nearly impossible demands by doing the unimaginable—rendering sinners righteous without violating justice. And tell them that now they need not tremble before this Judge, nor cower before this bar, but they are to come boldly to his throne where they "will receive mercy and find grace to help them in time of need."
• Tell the story of this truth's impact on you or someone else. You might begin, "I remember the first time this promise really hit me…" and you tell your story. One Sunday my text included Matthew 9:36, and I came across a story told by William Willimon when he was Dean of the Chapel at Duke University. He told about walking across the Duke campus one fall afternoon during the 'Oktoberfest' celebration with hundreds of students, some of them barely clothed, many of them drunk, rock music blaring everywhere. His friend Stuart Henry turned to him and said, "Do you know what the ultimate proof of the divinity of Jesus is for me?" Willimon thought to himself, "That's a strange question, especially at this time and in this place." And then he answered, "No. What is the ultimate proof of Jesus' divinity for you, Stuart?" Stuart said, "It's that statement from the Scriptures that reminds me of just how differently from you and me that Jesus views all this. The verse says, 'He looked upon the multitudes and had compassion.'" That story brought the wow to the text.
• Capture the wow in a well-turned phrase. Quotations are hard to pull off, but sometimes they make the wow sing. Recently, for example, in a sermon about suffering, I used this statement from an unknown author: "We can sometimes see more through a tear than through a telescope."
  
  Sometimes I sense the need for a pithy line to capture the wow, but I can't find one anywhere. I remember well the day years ago when I was complaining about that dilemma to the Lord, and I think he said, "Write your own! Write your own 'quote'." I realized that maybe I could wordsmith a phrase that would do, that perhaps I could say something with a wow in it. It doesn't happen often, and it usually takes time and work, but it can be done!

The wow in a sermon is not always the most important part of the message. That may be the application, the clear statement of a doctrine, or the convicting prod of a story. But finding the wow factor in every text assures that sermons will have biblically-grounded pathos and won't be lifeless lectures.

Lee Eclov recently retired after 40 years of local pastoral ministry and now focuses on ministry among pastors. He writes a weekly devotional for preachers on Preaching Today.