Listen to this penetrating thought by John Piper,- Laugher seems to have replaced repentance as the goal of many preachers. Laughter means people feel good. It means they like you. It means you have moved them. It means you have some measure of power. It seems to have all the marks of successful communication–if the depth of sin and the holiness of God and the danger of hell and need for broken hearts are left out of account.
This quote from Spurgeon hits the nail on the head:- I dare not preach to this congregation as if you were all Christians, for you are not. I dare not deliver even one discourse under the delusion that all my hearers are saved, for, alas, they are not. This is the fault with multitudes of sermons—that they seem to carry the whole congregation to Heaven when possibly the major part of those present may be going down to Hell! That will not do (Spurgeon, quoted in The King in Pilate’s Hall, Majesty in Misery vol 3 (BoT), p. 119, ).
John MacArthur, Jr who has taught the scriptures for 40 years...- Preaching the Word is the only right way to preach because it brings the preacher into direct contact with the mind of the Holy Spirit, the author of Scripture. It is for that reason that the preacher of the Word finds the process of study and discovery to be even more rewarding than the preaching that results from it, gratifying as that can be.It is tragic and puzzling that so many preachers who recognize Scripture to be God’s own Word spend more time investigating and interacting with the limited and imperfect minds of other men than delving into the infinite and holy mind of God. Part of the reason, of course, is that many hearers do not really want to delve into the depths of God’s righteousness and truth, because it exposes their own shallowness and sin. In his second letter to Timothy, Paul warned his son in the faith about the danger of those who hold “to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power” (2 Tim. 3:5). Later in that same epistle he would warn again that “the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine;. . . and will turn away their ears from the truth, and will turn aside to myths” (2 Tim. 4:3–4; cf. Acts 20:29–30).
When we think of the word “apologetics,” we typically think of giving a defense of the faith when confronted with objections by non-Christians. Many divorce the work of a preacher and apologist by seeing the two as entirely separate roles in the church. However, I would like to argue that preaching is apologetics.
Expository preaching (also referred to as systematic exposition) is a form of preaching that expounds upon the meaning of a particular text or passage of Scripture. While the term could be used in connection with any religion that has organized worship that includes scriptural teaching, the term is most usually used in relation to Christianity, and is thus concerned with the exposition of the Bible. The practice probably originated from the Jewish tradition of the rabbi giving a "Dvar Torah", explaining a passage from the Torah, during the prayer services. on line dictionary. Expository preaching differs from topical preaching in that the former concentrates on a specific text and discusses topics covered therein, whereas the latter concentrates on a specific topic and references texts covering the topic.
