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Leaving Christ Out of His Story

Read Part 1.

Reviewed by Douglas Brown.

Waltke, Bruce with Cathi J. Fredricks. Genesis: A Commentary. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001. Jacketed Hardback, 656 pp. $39.99.

(Review copy courtesy of Zondervan.)

Leaving Christ Out of His Story

Are morals overrated? Is it a waste of time and energy to lead a morally pure lifestyle? Should youth pastors exhort their students to obey their parents, to tell the truth, and to read their Bibles? Or are Christians somehow beyond those rules now? These types of questions are inevitably asked of those who speak out against moralistic preaching. But these questions betray an underlying misunderstanding of the dangers of moralism.

Expository preaching has been succinctly defined as preaching in which the point of the text is the point of the sermon. In this sense, all preaching should be expository, whether it handles a topic, a verse, or an extended passage of Scripture. If a preacher uses God’s words to make his (the preacher’s) point, then how does God get a word in edgewise?