Avoid These Expository Imposters

When it takes you 200+ sermons to preach an epistle of <3000 words, you're not preaching that letter, you're doing biblical theology. It's not wrong, but it's not expository preaching.

I like to take my time. I like to preach every possible point I find in the text. That sometimes means a topical message focused on just one word (in its context). Sometimes it means working through the logic of a whole paragraph. Sometimes it means isolating each point in that paragraph as its own message. Sometimes it’s a broad overview to tie everything together.

To me that’s expository preaching.

Rushing through a book in a few messages leaves a lot on the table. I can do it but it usually gives me hives just to think about it

I don't think there's anything wrong with your approach, but I also don't think it qualifies as "expository." FWIW

Expository preaching is far more flexible than simply teaching a Bible lesson. It expounds and expands on the text in its full meaning and context, while utilizing various forms to do so.

I’m a lay person, and hence untrained in homiletics, but I tend to see expository preaching as what was modeled for us in Nehemiah 8:8 - “So they read in the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading.”

I also tend to think that all of overview messages, word studies in context, and very detailed verse by verse all fit together into the overall sense of expository. The Puritans wrote of both “spade work” and “trowel work” when unpacking the scriptures. Occasionally, even topical sermons fit the expository category, as long as they stick with what the scriptures are actually saying, rather than just using them as a launchpad into something else.

Sure, there may be some definition of expository that means a very specific type of sermon to those who are experts in the different forms. But as long as the preacher is careful to explain the whole Word of God to us, and not his hobby horses or other similar digressions, I personally believe he is meeting his obligation to exposit the scriptures to us.