Why The Unusual Preaching?

Many of the people who attend the Minden Evangelical Free Church have some church background and in that experience you are accustomed to pastors preaching on different topics each week that are not related to the previous week. In some cases you may have been in congregations where the pastor followed a lectionary that assigned different passages and topics each week to fit with the calendar of the church year. Others of you may be have known pastors to preach a series of sermons on a topic. These are the most common approaches to preaching.

If you have been attending our Sunday services any time at all you have discovered I spend most of my time preaching verse by verse through sections of a Bible book or through an entire book of the Bible, a manner often called expository preaching. I have a very strong conviction that most preaching should be of this type. Here are a number of reasons that stand behind my conviction.

1. Expository preaching, as the label suggests, has as its goal, to expose what the text of the Bible says, rather than reading in what we want it to say or reading it in some general way that acknowledges the main theme, but then shapes it according to a preacher’s personal thoughts or preferences. This type of preaching demonstrates to the congregation that the pastor works to remain true to what God says in the Bible, rather than espousing his own thoughts. In other words, such an approach can give added confidence the congregation is hearing a word from God and not merely from man.

2. God gave the Bible to us in books, so to understand each book of the Bible as it was given is to grasp Scripture in the same form God inspired it. There should be something in this method that comes closer to the message God originally intended for us in each book. This is not to suggest that topical preaching (if done with great care and flowing out of diligent and careful study) has no place. After all, Jesus, Paul, and most every other preacher recorded in the Bible preached topical sermons. It does, however, honor the form in which the Bible was inspired. It also is the method of preaching that best serves preaching’s ultimate goal, which is to uncover what the text of the Bible says to us.

3. Expository preaching provides a good model to the congregation for how to read or study through a book of the Bible. It demonstrates what kinds of questions to ask, how to study words, how to understand the flow-of-thought. Similarly, it lays a foundation for a congregation to understand a book of the Bible with greater detail as they read through it after the pastor has preached on it. Such preaching is some of the best preparation a congregation can go through for their own devotions and for family devotions.

4. This approach to preaching provides greater variety of topics, as well as forces the pastor to deal with topics he may not choose to take up if he were not going through the book. What this results in is a better understanding of the entire counsel of God in Scripture.

5. As a pastor studies Bible books verse by verse it forces him to wrestle thoroughly with an entire book and to discover the inspired author’s flow of thought as the latter gives wise counsel, direction, correction, encouragement, and the like to his first readers. Such disciplined study forms a very solid biblical foundation for a pastor’s counseling ministry, as well as for his understanding of the entire Bible. This is why thoughtful, careful expository preachers often make for good counselors.

6. Expository preaching gives a preacher the boldness to address a controversial topic since it is what comes next in the text. It helps to know he did not personally have to choose the topic, but is simply being faithful to what God inspired the biblical author to write next. Similarly, it can put a congregation at ease as they hear such a topic addressed that it is not the “hobby horse” of the pastor or something he has chosen to preach on merely to hit the congregation over the head. Again, they know it was simply the next topic in the text to cover.

7. Finally, verse by verse expository preaching tends to force the preacher and the congregation to dig deeper in the text. The result is the discovery of greater nuggets of truth, as well as more nourishing spiritual food.

All in all, though expository preaching has fallen on hard times among many evangelicals recently, I strongly believe it is the most beneficial manner of preaching for any congregation. It has a long, rich heritage, one that has often been at the heart of the strongest churches and the deepest, most lasting works of God. May our sovereign God be pleased to move among us through the verse by verse teaching of his Word!