Organising sermon preparationPosts in this series
There are a number of resources that the preacher should probably refer to in sermon preparation that are not technically commentaries.
Systematic Theologies
The Scripture Index at the back of Systematic theologies are a great way to see whether the text you're preaching on is a good proof text for a particular doctrine. This then can be most helpful if you suddenly realise that you have failed to give due emphasis to that doctrine in your sermon. Also many systematic theologies will give you a brief commentary on the passage which is usually worth reading.
But looking up the indices can be a pain particularly when you have a number of them and your text may often not be cited. So to speed things up, I scanned the indices of my systematic theologies, made separate PDFs of the images for each book, and now open them automatically with a PDF reader that remembers the place I was last up to (I explained how to do this here). That way I can quickly see whether a volume has a reference for my text.
Language grammars
I also find it helpful to look up where my text has been referenced in the major language grammars (e.g. BDF, Wallace, Robertson, Waltke & O'Connor, Jouon-Muraoka etc).
These grammars can often give you insight into how particular words are being used in your text. And although you may not explicitly mention subjective genitives in your sermon, knowing your own conclusion on the matter will definitely assist your exegesis.
But once again looking up the indices of multiple books consumes a lot of time. So to redeem the time I own all the major grammars in my Bible software (Bibleworks) which allows me to quickly click through from my text to the places in the grammars where the text is cited.
Sermons and other books
Certain books with scriptural indices should also be checked regularly for material relating to your sermon text. For example books of collected sermons from great preachers; or books like Carson's 'Exegetical Fallacies' could be checked to see if you text has a common exegetical fallacy that you may have unwittingly made.
Now, once again, looking up the indices of all these books can consume a lot of time. So I would encourage using other peoples master indices or make your own.
Examples of other people's indices would include the sermon index for Spurgeon's sermons and Martin's 'A guide to the Puritans'.
I also have made my own master index using Excel. I have columns for the Scriptural references, the names of the books and the page numbers. I maintain this index by adding new books during downtime in front of the TV.
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