As iron sharpens iron,
one person sharpens another. (Proverbs 27:17)
Reposted from The Cripplegate
Here’s a glimpse into the sausage factory of expository preaching. A while back my commitment to consecutive exposition was acutely tested. I tackled the chapter every seminoid dreads from the day he graduates, namely Leviticus 15 (you know, the heart-warming one about emissions and discharges of various bodily fluids). The challenges of preaching this sticky wicket are manifold.
“Topical teaching is not bad, and it does have a place in our projects. I also believe, however, that expositional teaching – when done well with young people – covers all the topics that we’d want to cover anyway. I believe it does this with more healthy and specific applications, while also imparting skills in how to handle the Bible.” - Church Leaders
“The sheer number of fine-grained decisions that goes into the making of any Bible translation says to me that people are in special danger of committing the ‘insufficient sampling’ fallacy when evaluating them.” - Mark Ward
In this excerpt from his classic text, Biblical Preaching, Haddon Robinson explains his view of the “big idea” of biblical preaching:1
Last month, I introduced the concept of expository preaching, an issue which can no longer be restricted to discussions between preachers, or reserved for Seminaries and Bible College classrooms. Today, exposition has become an identity marker by which to evaluate churches. In his book, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, Mark Dever lists expositional preaching as mark number one.
If you think the subject of “preaching” is for preachers only, you would be mistaken. With the reformation taking place in American churches today, there has been a new emphasis upon expository preaching. Many “laymen” now consider expositional preaching one of the marks of a healthy church, and those who have been exposed to it are often reluctant to return to topical preaching again.
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