PreachingToday.com: Tell us about your sermon preparation process.

Ligon Duncan: Before I begin planning a sermon, I look at the book of the Bible and break it into pericopes. Those pericopes change from time to time, though, depending upon how much I'm trying to bite off in the course of an exposition.

My sermon preparation process entails reading the text multiple times in different English versions, but my nose is in the original text from the very beginning. I use BibleWorks™ from start to finish (with its wonderful tools, lexicons, morphology resources, and so on), checking the Greek, Hebrew, or Aramaic background to the text (looking for words and phrases that are especially important to the biblical author). I prefer an essentially literal English translation, but even with that aid, I want to make sure that I'm paying attention to the vocabulary and word order of the original, so that I don't allow the English to drive my understanding and exposition in an unhelpful (and inaccurate) ...