6 Feb 2024
The ideal pattern for a settled ministry in a local church context is to preach through a book of the Bible consecutively, unit by unit, giving due weight to the context of the whole book and the whole sweep of salvation history or biblical theology. Such an expository ministry will over time produce a Bible-loving, Bible-reading and, with prayer, BIble-obeying church.
We have noted that we need to allow the text in the Bible to set the agenda. We begin with the discipline of exegesis, where the question is “What does the passage say?” It is a discipline because it is dependent on our careful listening to the text, becoming passionate hearers of God’s Word before we become textual analysts. If our preaching is going to connect we need to hear God speaking directly to us personally, so that we understand the significance of the text that we must pass on to our hearers.
The ‘what’ is vitally important but without the deeper ‘why’ questioning it could merely produce an exegetical lecture, correct perhaps in comment but ineffective in producing change. So the exegetical work always starts to open up further expository enquiry – and here the golden key is context.
In each biblical text, it is important for us to
work on three contexts: firstly, the immediate literacy context of what precedes and what follows the unit under consideration; next the relationship to the wider context of the book, and the question of the book’s purpose i.e. its pastoral intention.
If the whole Bible is God preaching God to us, what is he saying about himself in this particular context and what was that designed to achieve from the original recipients of the text? If we can discover why this inspired word was to ‘them then’, that will be of great help in building the bridge to ‘us now’.
The third context is to ascertain the contribution of this unit to the whole Bible where, comparing Scripture with Scripture, we ensure that we preach our text in the context of the grace of God in the gospel and the centrality of Christ to the whole revelation.
Context gives application. The greatest desire of the preacher is for the Word to travel through the mind to the heart in order to activate and energise the will, as it is put into practice in life. That is why prayer is needed, on the part of the preacher as well as the congregation – it is the Holy Spirit’s gracious work to open blind eyes, to unstop deaf ears and soften hard hearts.
Preaching can address all ages and stages in the presentation whereas BIble study groups are limited to those in the groups. It is preaching that builds the church as nothing else can. The preached Word nurtured and grew the church; it has a power that is located nowhere else, simply because it is God’s Word.
In the light of what has been shared regarding preaching from a text, it is more helpful to focus on the flow of the communication in the text rather than expounding verse by verse in the text and in doing that, we miss out what the text seeks to communicate as a whole, as we wander from one verse to the next. A sermon embodies a single, all-encompassing concept; any single sermon should have just one major idea. The points or subdivisions should be parts of the one grand thought i.e. the points of a sermon should be smaller sections of the one theme, broken into tinier fragments so that the mind may grasp them and the life assimilate them. In one sense, every sermon should have a theme, and that theme should be the theme of the portion of Scripture on which it is based. The preacher should not just come out with a theme of his own and try to ‘squeeze’ the text and the portion of Scripture into the particular theme he chose. Expounding one verse after another in a particular portion of Scripture invariably results in losing the main theme completely and ends with multiple themes that ‘dilute’ the main theme and major idea that is intended.
Finally, the Son himself is the apex of revelation; to use the language of John the Apostle, Jesus himself is the ultimate “Word”, God’s self-expression, the Word incarnate. Hence in preaching, whenever appropriate, the exposition and application of each text should be tied to the centrality of the Son, and the relationship with his people.