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"The preacher's God-given responsibility is to deliver accurately and effectively to his listeners what the Holy Spirit meantwhen He inspired the writters to pen Scriptures. Anything short of this is not expository preaching and falls short of fulfilling the divine mandate to "preach the Word" (2 Timothy 4:2. To communicate accurately and effectively is the most fulfilling service that a person can render to others."Robert L. Thomas
Why is it important to preach/teach in this manner.
Preaching, as I understood the procedure in those first years, changed dramatically. Preaching as a sixteen year old, certainly was not with any thought of what I really knew about the explanation of scripture. I definitely did not see any kind of theology within the sermon. But again I didn’t see anything wrong with the way I was preaching either. There are many preachers today who preach that identical way. So why would I presume I needed to change?
The purpose of this series of commentaries is to lay out the process that I have come though over the last 26 years of ministry. As I have said, the first twenty years were within the panoramas of ideas that I comprised. in my mind. But as I said, after going to the Shepherd’s Conference, My view of how I should preach the Word of God changed. And after reading Kaiser’s book, I knew that I could not do that in the manner that he was teaching.
What were some other convincing statements that caused me to believe I should preach this in this manner?
Puritan commentator William Gouge (1575-1653) said this about the duty of a minister:
"Ministers are to imitate God, and, to their endeavor, to instruct people in the mysteries of godliness, and to teach them what to believe and practice, and then to stir them up in act and deed, to do what they are instructed to do."
Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892) added to Gouge remarks:
"It is among uninstructed flocks that the wolves of property make havoc; sound teaching is the best protection from the heresies which ravage right and left among us."
The Master’s Staff said this:
"To provide wholesome spiritual nourishment for God’s people from the Word."
John MacArthur’s review of preaching patterns said this:
"Specifically, evangelical preaching ought to reflect our conviction that God’s Word is infallible and inerrant. Too often it does not.. "
John Calvin said this about preaching:
Preaching is not only the explication of Scripture, it is also the application of Scripture. "Just as Calvin clarified Scripture word by word, so he applied the Scripture sentence by sentence to the life and experience of his congregation."
Here are a few things I understood about this expository preaching.
It’s the method of how you preach. Expository preaching focuses predominantly on the text or texts under consideration along with its context. This could be called, "contextual preaching."Ex. Matthew 1:1-6, Ephesians 2:8-10 That is, rather then preaching on a topical thought, you make an explanation of the text. You are explaining the verses. You are setting forth its meaning, and explaining what is difficult to understand, and make appropriate application. And when you use the KJV, this process takes quite awhile.
You read a portion of Scripture to the audience, and then you actually develop a message that gives the meaning of that text. And what the text is instruction the audience to do, that is what you preaching. The sermon follows the flow of the passages of Scriptures
In other words, you start the sermon with the idea that you are going to explain the passages of Scripture that you are reading to the audience. Rather than having a sermon that you say what you want to say, and then try to put scripture with the sermon. This is both biblical and practical.
Whatever I say the Bible teaches, I am to used the Bible to establish it. Its not just rambling comments and off hand remarks about a passage, it’s a clear understanding
Charles E. Whisnant
