Centers For Missionary Training, Tactics & Theology Expository Preaching & Homiletics

Expository Preaching & Homiletics

For The Man Who Does Not Want To Crash & Burn In The Pulpit

This, as the title suggests, is a “crash course” for you men who have been called by
God to serve as elders or teachers in your respective churches and thus, need some
help in the area of preaching and teaching. Whereas, many would suggest that the
best course of action for you to take is to go to a good Bible school or seminary for
this training that simply is not feasible or even necessary in most cases. This is
especially true if you find yourself in a church where expository preaching is being
done on a regular basis and you are paying attention.

If your pastor is consistently preaching and teaching expositorily verse-by-verse

through Books of the Bible and you have been paying attention to what he is saying
and doing then you already have a model which to emulate. Furthermore, if he is a
good pastor he will have no greater joy than to share with you the “secrets of the
trade” so to speak. Ask him to spend time (invest is a better word) teaching you
how to study and preach expositorily.

If you are not blessed to be in a church with quality expository preaching all is not
lost. There simply is no reason why the man who desires to hear good preaching
can’t—not in our world of radio, CDs, MP3s, DVDs, and all the good preachers that
are recorded on them. My favorite expository preachers are available in most places
on the radio and if not they are available on the internet or by recordings made
available through their churches and ministries. Thus, if we learn best by seeing
others do what we want to learn how to do, there is simply no excuse for not being
able to do so.

This course is not to be confused with a course on hermeneutics or principles of

Bible study. This course builds on the premise that you already have received some
basic training in how to interpret Scripture. Whereas, you will be reminded of basic
hermeneutical principles throughout this course, it is very important to realize that
you cannot preach with authority what you do not understand with clarity.
Therefore, make sure you have a good understanding of the basic principles of Bible

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Centers For Missionary Training, Tactics & Theology Expository Preaching & Homiletics

interpretation before you begin trying to preach and teach the Bible. The method of
expository verse-by-verse teaching is futile if you don’t know what the verses are
teaching.

This course of study has been designed to give you the basic theory of expository
preaching and homiletics. It has also been designed in such a way that you will
learn from the experts. This notebook is loaded with quotes from the great
preachers of today and the past. These quotes have been selected and
appropriately placed throughout the notes to provide you with the advice of those
men whom God has used greatly as expositors. You will also find these men’s
words to be highly motivational in pushing you to work hard at this process of
breaking open the Word of God to those you teach.

If you listen to the instructor and take the time to read through this entire notebook
and pay great attention to the advice of the preacher’s, given throughout, you will
come away with a good understanding of what expository preaching is, why it is
necessary, and how to do it. You will, undoubtedly, get out of this course what you
put into it. May you put your all into it for the glory of God and the sake of all those
who will one day be listening to you preach.

Expository Preaching

What is Expository Preaching?

Expository preaching is the authoritative proclamation of a selected passage of

Scripture that has been accurately interpreted and then organized into a body of
teaching that includes an introduction, a body of material which explains the
passage, and a conclusion that applies the meaning of the passage to the hearer.
Expository preaching starts with the passage in correctly interpreting it through
careful study in its grammatical, historical, geographical, and cultural context so as
to deliver the meaning, explanation, and application of that passage to those who
are listening.

“At its best, expository preaching is the presentation of biblical truth, derived from
and transmitted through a historical, grammatical, Spirit-guided study of a passage

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Centers For Missionary Training, Tactics & Theology Expository Preaching & Homiletics

in its context, which the Holy Spirit applies first to the life of the preacher and then
through him to his congregation.”1

“No matter what the length of the portion explained may be, if it is handled in such
a way that its real and essential meaning as it existed in the mind of the particular
Biblical writer and as it exists in the light of the overall context of Scripture is made
plain and applied to the present-day needs of the hearers, it may properly be said to
be expository preaching.… It is emphatically not preaching about the Bible, but
preaching the Bible. “What saith the Lord” is the alpha and the omega of expository
preaching. It begins in the Bible and ends in the Bible and all that intervenes springs
from the Bible. In other words, expository preaching is Bible-centered preaching.”2

“True expository preaching is, therefore, doctrinal preaching, it is preaching which

addresses specific truths from God to man. The expository preacher is not one who
‘shares his studies’ with others, he is an ambassador and a messenger,
authoritatively delivering the Word of God to men. Such preaching presents a text,
then, with that text in sight throughout, there is a deduction, argument and appeal,
the whole making up a message which bears the authority of Scripture itself.”3

“The Word of God alone is to be preached, in its perfection and inner consistency.
Scripture is the exclusive subject of preaching, the only field in which the preacher is
to labour.”4

An expository sermon is one “that expounds Scripture by deriving from a specific

text main points and sub-points that disclose the thought of the author, cover the
scope of the passage, and are applied to the lives of the listeners.”5

“The business of the preacher is to stick to the passage chosen and to set forth
exclusively what it has to say or suggest, so that the ideas expressed and the
principles enunciated during the course of the sermon plainly come out of the
Written Word of God, and have its authority for their support rather than just the
opinion or the enthusiasm of their human expositor.”6

1
Haddon W. Robinson, “What is Expository Preaching?” Bibliotheca Sacra 131 (Jan-Mar 1974): p.
57.

2
Merrill F. Unger, Principles of Expository Preaching (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1955), p. 33.
3
Iain H. Murray, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The Fight of Faith 1939-1961 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth,
1990), p. 261. (Murray describing Lloyd-Jones view of expository preaching)
4
William Perkins, The Art of Prophesying (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth, 1996), p. 9. [This is a
reprint of the original work, which was actually the very first book on homiletics coming out of the English
Reformation. It was originally published in 1617.]
5
Bryan Chapell, Christ-centered Preaching (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1994) p. 129.
6
Alan M. Stibbs, Expounding God’s Word (London: Inter-Varsity Press, 1960), p. 17.

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“Expository preaching is a necessary corollary of the doctrine of the God-breathed

nature of Scripture. The idea is not so much that God breathed into the Scriptures,
but that the Scriptures are the product of His breathing out. . . Scripture maintains a
‘breath of God’ quality. The preacher is to make God’s Word known and make it
understandable. He is to limit himself to it without adding or subtracting. . . .Such
word-focused ministry, based on divinely given Scripture (as Paul makes plain to the
church at Ephesus), fulfills four goals all at once: it brings believers to maturity
marked by spiritual stability; it produces a people whose lives are full of integrity;
and it equips the church for service so that each member is engaged in ministry to
others (Eph. 4:12-16)”7

“An expository ministry is the proper response to a God-breathed Scripture. . .

Central to it all is that concern which the word ‘exposition’ itself enshrines: a display
of what is there.”8

Expository preaching is the authoritative, organized, and systematic

proclaiming of the correct meaning of a text of Scripture so that the
listeners are clearly able to understand what God has said, why He
has said it, and what they are to do about what He has said.

Why Is Expository Preaching Necessary?

Fellowship with God is based upon preaching the proclamation of God. The apostle
John made this very clear in 1 John 1:3. He wrote that: “what we have seen and
heard we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and
indeed our fellowship is with the Father and His Son Jesus Christ.” In proclaiming
the Person and Proclamation of and about Christ (vv.1-2), John, in speaking for the
apostolic witness, is providing the basis by which his listeners can enter into not only
fellowship with God, but also the fellowship of God, the very fellowship He
experiences with His Son the Lord Jesus.

The idea behind the word proclamation is that of a publicly declared word of
proclamation, which is characterized by accuracy, clarity, legitimacy, and authority.
Thus, in order for there to be fellowship with and of God, the proclamation must be
legitimate, accurate, clear, and authoritative. Thank God, it is. The Word of God is
absolutely legitimate, accurate, clear, and authoritative. However, whereas the
7
Don Kistler, ed. Feed My Sheep: A Passionate Plea for Preaching, Expository Preaching by Derek
Thomas (Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria Publications, 2002), pp. 63-64.
8
Ibid.

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Word of God is all these things, sometimes the proclaimer of the proclamation is not
and therein lies the reason why expository preaching is necessary.

Expository teaching and preaching is the only way the whole counsel of God can be
systematically proclaimed as the legitimate, accurate, clear, and authoritative
proclamation that it is so that people can experience fellowship with God as well as
the fellowship of God.

To enjoy intimate fellowship with God is to abide in God or to abide in Christ. This
abiding in Christ as described in John 15:4-8, is necessary if believers are to glorify
God. We can do nothing apart from Christ including glorify Him. Thus, in verse 8,
we are told that the Father is glorified in us when we bear much fruit, which is only
possible as we are abiding in Christ (vv. 4-5). Therefore, the proclamation is
necessary if we are to enjoy the fellowship with God that glorifies Him.

Furthermore, in 1 John 1:4, John states that the purpose of writing these things to
us is that our joy may be made full or overflowing. Thus, put all together, the
necessity of proclaiming the proclamation of God with accuracy, legitimacy, clarity,
and authority is that we might enjoy fellowship with God, for His glory and our
unceasing joy.

Put another way, expository preaching, that is, the accurate, legitimate, clear, and
authoritative verse-by-verse teaching of the Word of God, is one of the primary
means to God’s glory and our joy.

…………………………………………………

“The only logical response to inerrant Scripture, then, is to preach it expositionally.

By expositionally, I mean preaching in such a way that the meaning of the Bible
passage is presented entirely and exactly as it was intended by God. Expository
preaching is the proclamation of the truth of God as mediated through the
preacher.”9

“It is no secret that Christ’s Church is not at all in good health in many places of the
world. She has been languishing because she has been fed, as the current line has
it, ‘junk food’; all kinds of artificial preservatives and all sorts of unnatural
substitutes have been served up to her. . . Simultaneously a worldwide spiritual
famine resulting from the absence of any genuine publication of the Word of God
(Amos 8:11) continues to run wild and almost unabated in most quarters of the
Church.”10

9
D. Martyn-Lloyd Jones, Preaching and Preachers (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1971), p. 22.
10
Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., Toward An Exegetical Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1981), pp. 7-8.

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Elements of Expository Preaching:

1. The sermon finds its sole source in and is saturated with Scripture.

“I say that good preaching is ‘saturated with Scripture’ and not ‘based on
Scripture’ because Scripture is more (not less) than the basis for good
preaching. Preaching that proclaims God’s supremacy does not begin with
the Scriptures as a basis and then wander off to other things. It oozes with
Scripture.”11

“What is so lacking . . . is exactly what needs to be kept in mind with respect

to every sermon which aspires to be at once both Biblical and practical: it
must be derived from an honest exegesis of the text and it must constantly
be kept close to the text. . . . Let it be stated as a sort of first principle that
preparation for preaching is always a movement which must begin with the
text of Scripture . . . “12

2. The sermon is developed through careful & respectful exegesis that takes into
account the divine nature of what is being studied—the very Word of God so
as to determine what the Word of God means.

(Exegesis comes from two Greek words, which when combined mean to “lead
out of”. Thus, the expository sermon is one that has been led out of or from
the text of Scripture rather than “into the text”.)

“Exegesis can now be defined as the skillful application of sound

hermeneutical principles to the biblical text in the original language with a
view to understanding and declaring the author’s intended meaning both to
the immediate and subsequent audiences. In tandem, hermeneutics and
exegesis focus on the biblical text to determine what it said and what it
originally meant.”13

“We owe to the Scriptures the same reverence as we owe to God, since it has
its only source in Him and has nothing of human origin mixed with it.”14

11
John Piper, The Supremacy of God in Preaching (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1990), p. 86.
12
Walter C. Kaiser, Toward An Exegetical Theology, pp. 19, 48.
13
John D. Grassmick, Principles and Practice of Greek Exegesis (Dallas: Dallas Theological Seminary,
1974), p. 7.
14
John Calvin, Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries: The Second Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians
and the Epistles to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, trans. T.A. Small, eds. David W. Torrance and Thomas F.
Torrance (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), p. 330.

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“I have endeavored, both in my sermons and also in my writings and

commentaries, to preach the Word purely and chastely, and faithfully to
interpret His sacred Scriptures.”15

“Effective sermons are the offspring of study, of discipline, of prayer, and

especially of the unction of the Holy Ghost.”16

“I have had the opportunity to hear much preaching over the last few years,
some very good, some mediocre, most very bad. What is the problem with
preaching? . . . good preaching demands hard work . . . I am convinced that
the basic reason for poor preaching is the failure to spend adequate time and
energy in preparation. Many preachers—perhaps most—simply don’t work
long enough on their sermons.”17

3. The sermon is based upon a correct interpretation of the Scripture text in its
normal, literal, and plain grammatical, historical, and cultural context.

4. The sermon clearly explains the original God-intended meaning of the

Scripture text.

5. The sermon has organization and clearly identifies the main point as well as
the supporting points of the Scripture passage.

6. The sermon includes the reading, explanation, and application of the passage
of Scripture being preached.

15
Theodore Beza, The Life of John Calvin, ed. Gary Sanseri (reprint, Milwaukee, Oregon: Back Home
Industries, 1996), p. 100.
16
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching & Preachers (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1971), p. 99.
17
Jay Adams, “Editorial: Good Preaching is Hard Work,” The Journal of Pastoral Practice 4, no. 2
(1980): 1.

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7. The sermon is authoritatively, powerfully, and seriously proclaimed so as to

affect the mind, the emotions, and the actions of the listener.

“But we preach. . . that is, our ask as Christian preachers is not subserviently
to answer all the questions which men put to us; nor to attempt to meet all
the demands which are made on us; nor hesitatingly to make tentative
suggestions to the philosophically minded; but rather to proclaim a message
which is dogmatic because it is divine. The preacher’s responsibility is
proclamation, not discussion. . . We are called to proclaim Christ, not to
discuss Him.”18

“The preacher should never be apologetic, he should never give the

impression that he is speaking by their leave as it were; he should not be
tentatively putting forth suggestions and ideas. This is not to be his attitude
at all. He is a man, who is there to ‘declare’ certain things; he is a man under
commission and under authority. He is an ambassador, and he should be
aware of his authority. He should always know that he comes to the
congregation as a sent messenger.”19

“You remember the famous lines of Richard Baxter: ‘I preached as never

sure to preach again—And as a dying man to dying men.’ I do not think that
can be bettered. You remember what was said of the saintly Robert Murray
McCheyne of Scotland in the last century. It is said that when he appeared in
the pulpit, even before he had uttered a single word, people would begin to
weep silently. Why? Because of this very element of seriousness. The very
sight of the man gave the impression that he had come from the presence of
God and that he was to deliver a message from God to them. That is what
had such an effect upon people even before he had opened his mouth. We
forget this element at our peril, and at great cost to our listeners.”20

“Preach means ‘to cry out, herald, or exhort’. Preaching should so stir a man
that he pours out the message with passion and fervor. Not all passionate
pleading from a pulpit, however, possess divine authority. When a preacher
speaks as a herald, he must cry out ‘the Word’. Anything less cannot
legitimately pass for Christian preaching.”21

The aims of all genuine preaching are “to quicken the conscience by the
holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the

18
John R. Stott, The Preacher’s Portrait (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1961), p. 110.
19
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching & Preachers, p. 83.
20
Ibid. p. 86.
21
Haddon W. Robinson, Biblical Preaching: The Development and Delivery of Ezpository Messages
(Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1980), p. 18.

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imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, to
devote the will to the purpose of God.”22

“The understanding must be informed, but in a manner, however, which

affects the heart, either to comfort the hearers, or to excite them to acts of
piety, repentance, or holiness.”23

8. The sermon not only teaches the meaning of the Scripture text but also
teaches the listener how to read, study, and apply the Scriptures for
themselves.

“It is one of the most heart-enriching experiences for any preacher to hear
someone bring something out of a text that reflects (albeit unwittingly) what
they have heard done countless times in the pulpit.”24

“A prime object of pastoral teaching is to teach the people how to read the
Bible [read: study] for themselves. . . Now, it is the preacher’s business, in
his public discourses, to give his people teaching by example, in the art of
interpreting the Word: he should exhibit before them, in actual use, the
methods by which the legitimate meaning is to be evolved. Fragmentary
preaching, however brilliant, will never do this.”25

“We want to let the congregation into the secret as to how we have reached
the conclusions we have reached as to what the Bible is actually saying. . . .
And gradually, as you are doing this in the pulpit, the congregation is
schooled not only in what the Bible teaches but in how we come to the
congregation as to what it teaches. So we have to show the congregation
what our hermeneutical methods are.”26

22
James Stewart, Heralds of God (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1972), p. 73. This quote, while
originally attributed to William Temple in regard to worship, was borrowed by Stewart and attributed to
preaching. Since the highest form of worship is the correct proclamation and response to God’s Word,
Stewart’s borrowing of the quote and attributing it to preaching is appreciated.
23
Arthur Pollard, ed. Let Wisdom Judge—Hints On Writing Sermons (in quoting Charles Simeon,
London: Inter-Varsity Press, 1959), p. 22.
24
Sinclair Ferguson, “Exegesis” in The Preacher and Preaching, ed. Samuel T. Logan, Jr. (Phillipsburg,
NJ.: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1986), p. 210.
25
R. L. Dabney, Lectures on Sacred Rhetoric (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1870), p. 81. The
book now appears under the new title, Evangelical Eloquence: A Course of Lectures on Preaching (Edinburgh:
The Banner of Truth Trust, 1999).
26
Timothy Dudley-Smith, John Stott: A Biography. The Later Years (Downers Grove, Ill: Inter-Varsity
Press, 2001), p. 335.

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9. The sermon is Spirit-empowered and anointed.

“I shall not attempt to teach a tiger the virtues of vegetarianism; but I shall
as hopefully attempt that task as I would try to convince an unregenerate
man of the truths revealed by God concerning sin, and righteousness, and
judgment to come. These spiritual truths are repugnant to carnal men, and
the carnal mind cannot receive the things of God. Gospel truth is
diametrically opposed fallen nature; and if I have not a power much stronger
than that which lies in moral suasion, or in my own explanations and
arguments, I have undertaken a task in which I am sure of defeat. . . Except
the Lord endow us with power from on high, our labour must be in vain, and
our hopes must end in disappointment.”27

“The great want of today is a holier ministry. We do not need more stalwart
polemics, more mighty apologists, or preachers who compass a wide range of
natural knowledge, important though these be. But we need men of God
who bring the atmosphere of heaven with them to the pulpit and speak from
the borders of another world.”28

10. The sermon must have an impact upon the preacher before it is preached
from the pulpit to the parishioner.

“To be led into a truth is more than barely to know it; it is to be intimately
and experimentally acquainted with it; to be piously and strongly affected
with it; not only to have the notion of it in our heads, but the relish and
savour and power of it in our hearts.”29

“To seek after mere notions of truth, without an endeavor after an experience
of its power in our hearts, is not the way to increase our understanding in
spiritual things. He alone is in a posture to learn from God who sincerely
gives up his mind, conscience, and affections to the power and rule of what is
revealed unto him. Men may have in their study of the Scripture other ends
also, as the profit and edification of others but if this conforming of their own
souls unto the power of the Word be not fixed in the first place in their
minds, they do not strive lawfully nor will they be crowned.”30

27
Charles Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry (reprint., Carlisle: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1986), p. 322.
28
This is an anonymous quote read by Iain Murray in a tape-recorded message entitled: :The Problems
of Contemporary Evangelism”.
29
Matthew Henry, Matthew Henry’s Commentary On The Whole Bible (reprint., Peabody: Hendickson
Publishers, 1994), vol. 5, p. 919.
30
John Owen, The Works of John Owen (reprint, Carlisle: The Banner of Truth Trust), vol. 4, pp. 205-
206.

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11. The sermon has as its intent the fulfilling of 2 Timothy 3:16, in that the
listeners are taught, rebuked, corrected, and trained in righteousness.

“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting

and training in righteousness.”

“The purpose of preaching is not to stir people to action while bypassing their
minds, so that they never see what reason God gives them for doing what
the preacher requires of them (that is manipulation); nor is the purpose to
stock people’s minds with truth, no matter how vital and clear, which then
lies fallow and does not become the seedbed and source of changed lives
(that is academicism). . . .The purpose of preaching is to inform, persuade,
and call forth an appropriate response to the God whose message and
instruction are being delivered.”31

12. The sermon has as its ultimate goal, the glory of God; as its ultimate
message, Jesus Christ; as its ultimate source, the Word of God; as its
ultimate power, the Spirit of God; and as its ultimate success, the
transformation of lives.

“The great design and intention of the office of the Christian preacher [is] to
restore the throne and dominion of God in the souls of men.”32

What Is Not Expository Preaching:

1. It is not a commentary running from word to word and verse to verse without
unity, outline, and pervasive drive.

2. It is not rambling comments and offhand remarks about a passage without a

background of thorough exegesis and logical order.

31
J. I. Packer, “Why Preach?” The Preacher and Preaching, ed. By Samuel T. Logan (Phillipsburg,
NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1986), p. 9.
32
Cotton Mather, Student and Preacher, or Directions for a Candidate of the Ministry (London:
Hindmarsh, 1726), p. v.

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3. It is not a mass of disconnected suggestions and inferences based on the

surface meaning of a passage but not sustained by a depth-and-breadth
study of the text.

4. It is not pure exegesis, no matter how scholarly, if it lacks a theme, thesis,

outline, and development.

5. It is not a mere structural outline of a passage with a few supporting

comments but without other rhetorical and sermonic elements.

6. It is not a topical homily using scattered parts of the passage but omitting
discussion of other equally important parts.

7. It is not a chopped-up collection of grammatical findings and quotations from

commentaries without a fusing of these elements into a smooth, flowing,
interesting, and compelling message.

8. It is not a Sunday-school-lesson type of discussion that has an outline of the

contents, informality, and fervency but lacks sermonic structure and rhetorical
ingredients.

9. It is not a Bible reading that links a number of scattered passages treating a

common theme but fails to handle any of them in a thorough, grammatical,
and contextual manner.

10. It is not the ordinary devotional or prayer-meeting talk that combines running
commentary, rambling remarks, disconnected suggestions, and personal

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reactions into a semi-inspirational discussion but lacks the benefit of the basic
exegetical-contextual study and persuasive elements.33

Arguments Against Expository Preaching

1. Expository verse-by-verse preaching is not conducive to meeting people’s felt

needs in a timely manner.

2. Expository preaching is not attractive or interesting to people today.

“When I discovered that the greatest complaint of the unchurched in my are

was ‘boring, irrelevant sermons,’ [how would they know if they were
unchurched?] I decided I’d better seriously reexamine my preaching. I
reviewed ten year’s worth of sermons asking one question: Would this make
sense to a totally unchurched person? It didn’t matter if I liked the message
or not. Neither was it enough for a sermon to be doctrinally correct
and homiletically sound. If I was going to start a church by attracting
hard-core pagans, it would have to be a message to which they could
relate.”34

“Unchurched people today are the ultimate consumers. We may not like it,
but for every sermon we preach, they’re asking, ‘Am I interested in that
subject or not?’ If they aren’t, it doesn’t matter how effective our delivery is;
their minds will check out.”35

[Since when have totally depraved people ever been interested in what God
has to say? And regarding believers, if they are true believers and the
preacher is a true preacher, they will be interested in what any portion of
God’s Word has to say.]

3. Expository preaching forces the preacher to deal with uncomfortable and

potentially divisive subjects that he could normally skip if his preaching style
was more topical.

33
John MacArthur, Jr., Rediscovering Expository Preaching (chapter written by Richard Mayhue,
Dallas: Word Publishing, 1992), pp. 10-11.
34
Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Church (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1995), pp.
293-294.
35
Bill Hybels, Mastering Contemporary Preaching (Portland: Multnomah, 1989), p. 27.

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“You know that I have not hesitated to preach anything that would be helpful
to you. . .” [Acts 20:20]

Paul did not seem to have a problem preaching about uncomfortable topics.
His underlying conviction, which we see in 2 Timothy 3:16-17, was that since
all Scripture is God-breathed—all Scripture is profitable for the believer to
hear preached.

4. Expository preaching tends to keep the church in one Book or section of

Scripture too long.

“The best length for a series is four to eight weeks. Anything longer than
eight weeks causes your congregation to lose interest. They begin to wonder
if you are knowledgeable about anything else.”36

But, what about Acts 20:26-27?

“Therefore, I declare to you today that I am innocent of the blood of all men.
For I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole counsel of God.”

[How does a preacher proclaim the “whole counsel” of God in the Book of
Romans or even 1 John in eight weeks or less? He doesn’t!]

5. Expository preaching is too constrictive and limits the preacher in utilizing his
creativity as well as creative license to craft a sermon that highlights his
abilities and giftedness as a communicator.

“”Today missed some fine opportunity of speaking a word for Christ. The
saw that I would have spoken as much for my honour as for His, and
therefore, He shut my mouth. I see that a man cannot be a faithful, fervent
minister until he preaches just for Christ’s sake, until he gives up trying to
attract people to himself, and seeks to attract them to Christ. Lord, give me
this.”37

“For we do not preach ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord. . .” (2 Cor. 4:5)

36
Ibid. p. 300.
37
A quote from Robert Murray McCheyne’s journal as cited by Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Studies in The
Sermon On The Mount (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1971), pp. 266-267.

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“And when I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech
or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God. . . and my message
and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in
demonstration of the Spirit and of power so that your faith would not rest on
the wisdom of men, but on the power of God.” (1 Cor. 2:1, 4-5)

“No man can glorify Christ and himself at the same time.” [Posted above the
pulpit stairs in a church in Aberdeen]

6. Expository preaching is hard and time consuming work.

“Expository preaching is a most exacting discipline. Perhaps that is why it is

so rare. Only those will undertake it who are prepared to follow the example
of the apostles and say, ‘It is not right that we should give up preaching the
Word of God to serve tables. . . . We will devote ourselves to prayer and to
the ministry of the Word’ (Acts 6:2, 4). The systematic preaching of the
Word is impossible without the systematic study of it. It will not be enough
to skim trough a few verses in daily Bible reading, nor to study a passage
only when we have to preach from it. No. We must daily soak ourselves in
the Scriptures.

We must not just study, as through a microscope, the linguistic minutiae of a

few verses, but take our telescope and scan the wide expanses of God’s
Word, assimilating its grand theme of divine sovereignty in the redemption of
mankind. ‘It is most blessed,’ wrote C. H. Spurgeon, ‘to eat into the very soul
of the Bible until, at last, you come to talk in Scriptural language, and your
spirit is flavoured with the words of the Lord, so that your blood is Bibline and
the very essence of the Bible flows from you”38

How To Prepare And Preach An Expository Sermon

1. Prepare yourself first and foremost.

“Take heed to yourselves, lest you live in those sins which you preach against
in others, and lest you be guilty of that which daily you condemn. Will you
make it your work to magnify God, and when you had done, dishonour him
as much as others? Will you proclaim Christ’s governing power, and yet
condemn it, and rebel yourselves? Will you preach his laws, and willfully
38
John R. Stott, The Preacher’s Portrait (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1961), pp. 30-31.

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break them? If sin be evil, why do you live in it? If it be not, why do you
dissuade men from it? If it be dangerous, how dare you venture on it? If it
be not, why do you tell men so? If God’s threatenings be true, why do you
not fear them? If they be false, why do you needlessly trouble men with
them, and put them into such frights without cause? . . . . Take heed to
yourselves, lest you cry down sin, and yet do not overcome it; lest while you
seek to bring it down in others, you bow to it, and become its slaves
yourselves. . . .Oh brethren! It is easier to chide at sin, than to over come
it.”39

“Take heed to yourselves, lest your example contradict your doctrine, and lest
you lay such stumbling-blocks before the blind, as may be the occasion of
their ruin; lest you unsay with your lives, what you say with your tongues. . .
.It will much more hinder your work, if you contradict yourselves, and if your
actions give your tongue the lie, and if you build up an hour or two with your
mouths, and all the week after pull down with your hands! This is the way to
make men think that the Word of God is an idle tale, and to make preaching
seem no better than prating. He that speaks, will surely do as he speaks.

One proud, surly, lordly word, one needless contention, one covetous action,
may cut the throat of many a sermon, and blast the fruit of all you have been
doing. . .Certainly, brethren, we have very great cause to take heed what we
do, as well as what we say: if we will be the servants of Christ indeed, we
must not be tongue servants only, but must serve him with our deeds, and
be ‘doers of the work, that we nay be blessed in our deed.’ As our people
must be ‘doers of the Word, and not hearers only’; so we must be doers and
not speakers only, lest we ‘deceive our own selves’. . . We must study as
hard how to live well, as how to preach well.”40

“Let the minister take care that his personal character agrees in all respects
with his ministry. We have all heard the story of the man who preached so
well and lived so badly, that when he was in the pulpit everybody said he
ought never to come out again, and when he was out of it they all declared
he ought never to enter it again.”41

“Do not forget the culture of the inner man—I mean of the heart. How
diligently the cavalry officer keeps his saber clean and sharp; every stain he
rubs off with the greatest care. Remember you are God’s sword, His
instrument—I trust a chosen vessel unto Him to bear His name. In great
measure, according to the purity and perfections of the instrument, will be

39
Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor (reprint, Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1979), pp. 67-68.
40
Ibid. pp. 63-64.
41
C.H. Spurgeon, Lectures To My Students: First Series (repint, Grand Rapids: Baker, 1977), pp. 12-13.

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the success. It is not great talents God blesses so much as great likeness to
Jesus. A holy minister is an awful weapon in the hand of God.”42

“The audience does not hear a sermon, they hear a man. Bishop William A.
Quayle had this in mind when he rejected standard definitions of homiletics
such as, ‘Preaching is the art of making a sermon and delivering it.’ ‘Why no,
that is not preaching, exclaimed the Bishop. ‘Preaching is the art of making a
preacher and delivering that!’”43

“True preaching comes when the loving heart and the disciplined mind are
laid at the disposal of the Holy Spirit. Ultimately God is more interested in
developing messengers than messages, and since the Holy Spirit confronts
men primarily through the Bible, a preacher must learn to listen to God
before he speaks for Him.”44

“The aroma of God will not linger on a person who does not linger in the
presence of God.”45

2. Pray, pray, pray and then keep praying.

“Prayer. . . is one half of a man’s ministry; and it gives to the other half all its
power and success. Without prayer, a Minister is of no use to the church, nor
of any advantage to mankind. He sows; and God gives no increase. He
preaches; and his words are only like ‘sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal’.
He recites the praises of God; while ‘his heart is far from Him’. It is our
prayer alone, then, that gives the whole strength and efficacy to our different
administrations: and that man ceases, if I may use the expression, to be a
public Minister from the time he ceases to pray.”46

“The oral side of our career is visible, but it is never the source of spiritual
power. In fact, our devotional life. . . is the secret of real clout. . . Preaching,
in one sense, merely discharges the firearm that God has loaded in the silent

42
Andrew A. Bonar, ed., Memories of McCheyne (reprint, Chicago: Moody Press, 1978), p. 95.
43
As heard in my homiletics course at Baptist Bible College, PA, 1986.
44
Haddon W. Robinson, Biblical Preaching, pp. 25-26.
45
John Piper, The Supremacy of God in Preaching, p. 60.
46
Charles Bridges, The Christian Ministry with an Inquiry Into the Causes of its Inefficiency (reprint,
Carlisle: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1991), p. 147.

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place. The successful volley does not mean that we have passed homiletics
but rather that we have been with God.”47

When it comes to preaching, “it is in the closet that the battle is lost or
won.”48

“. . .in his study the prophet can build his altar and on it lay the wood. There
he can lovingly place his sacrifice (sermon) but still he knows that the fire
must come down from God. Come it will, if he prays before he works, and if
he works in the spirit of prayer.”49

“During the week. . . locked up with my books. . . study and. . . communion

mingle as I apply the tools of exegesis and exposition in. . . open communion
with the Lord. I seek His direction, thank Him for whatever I discover, plead
for wisdom and insight, and desire that He enable me to live what I learn and
preach. A special burden for prayer begins to grip my heart on Saturday
evening. Before I go to sleep, I. . . spend one final time going over my
notes. That involves an open line of communication with God as I
meditatively and consciously offer my notes up to the Lord for approval,
refinement and clarity. I awake Sunday morning in the same spirit of prayer.
Arriving at the church early, I spend time. . . in prayer, then join the elders
who pray with me for the messages.”50

3. Choose a text to preach.

There is wisdom in the words of an old recipe for rabbit stew. “First, catch
the rabbit.” This is true in preaching as well. Before you can preach, you
must know what passage you are preaching.

For the teaching pastor or elder, this should not be difficult if he is in the
habit of preaching in series through books in the Bible. For the visiting
preacher or the elder who assumes the duty of preaching occasionally, it is a
bit more challenging. Since, he will only preach once or perhaps twice in
succession, he should not use the opportunity to “ride a hobby horse” or
correct a situation in the church he feels the teaching pastor is neglecting or
not giving justice to. He should never open a can of worms he will not have
to deal with. Rather, he should preach on a text of Scripture that the Lord
has used to speak recently to him.

47
Calvin Miller, Spirit, Word, and Story (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1989), pp. 25-26.
48
A quote attributed to Edward Payson by: Henry C. Fish, Power in the Pulpit (Carlisle: The Banner of
Truth Trust, n.d..), p. 19.
49
Andrew W. Blackwood, The Preparation of Sermons (New York: Abingdon, 1948), p. 196.
50
John MacArthur, Jr., Rediscovering Expository Preaching, p. 79.

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For those who are preaching regularly, the big question is not, “What text
should I preach?” but, “What book in the Bible should I preach? The answer
to this question can only be discovered through prayer and the prayerful
consideration of what your flock needs at the present time. Like a well-
trained and astute doctor, who knows his patient, the pastor must know what
passages and books to prescribe in the feeding and caring for his flock.

4. Diligently study the text so as to interpret it correctly.

Any man who desires to preach the Word of God must study the science and
art of hermeneutics. One cannot preach what he does not know. Certainly,
one should never assume the pulpit apart from a basic understanding of how
to study and interpret Scripture. It is not enough to run to a bookshelf and
pull your favorite commentary off the shelf so as to merely regurgitate the
thoughts of the author when you preach. You must be committed to doing
the work of an expositor if you desire to be one.

“Interpretation of Scripture is the cornerstone not only of the entire sermon

preparation process, but also of the preacher’s life. A faithful student of
Scripture will seek to be as certain as possible that the interpretation is
biblically accurate.”51

“If the suggestions which have been offered are well founded, it will be
obvious that expository preaching is a difficult task. It requires much close
study of Scripture in general, and much special study of the particular
passage to be treated. To make a discourse which shall be explanatory and
yet truly oratorical, bearing a rich mass of details but not burdened with
them, full of Scripture and abounding in practical applications, to bring even
dull, uninformed, and unspiritual minds into interested and profitable contact
with an extended portion of the Bible—of course, this must be difficult.”52

A. Start with, continue with, and finish with prayer.

B. Read the passage as well as the chapter and book it is in several times
to understand how the passage you are preaching fits into the overall
context of the chapter, book, and Bible.

51
Al Fasol, Essentials of Biblical Preaching (Grand Rapids: baker, 1989), p. 41.
52
John A. Broadus, On The Preparation and Delivery of Sermons (reprint, Grand Rapids: AP&A, n.d.),
p. 124.

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C. Read the passage over and over again with a notebook and pen in
hand. Jot down observations you see in the passage. List words you
need to define as well as questions you need to answer in order to
understand the passage. Note and record the atmosphere of the
passage. Note any figures of speech you may need to research as well
as any cultural, historical, or geographical information you may need
to give attention to. Keep in mind that you must bridge these 2000
year old gaps of history, culture, and geography as well as the gap
that exists between the Western world and the world of the East if you
are to correctly understand Scripture.

D. Using a good study tool such as the Zodhiates Old or New Testament
Word Study Bible to look up and define all the words you listed. Then
look to see how the same words are used in other places in the Bible,
especially by the same author as the book you are studying. Then,
using the Zodhiates grammatical codes, determine the part of speech
of the word. You need to determine if the word is a verb, a command,
an adjective, a noun, a singular or plural noun, a participle, an adverb,
whatever. It would not hurt to borrow your teenager’s English
grammar book to refresh your memory if you’ve forgotten what these
parts of speech all mean and do in a sentence.

Once you have defined all the words you need to understand and
know how they are being used in the passage—rewrite the passage in
your own words.

Make sure you identify what the passage’s main idea is. Then you
need to identify the supporting sub-points. If you don’t do this—you
cannot outline or preach the passage correctly.

Keep in mind, an expository sermon is not a running commentary on a

passage of Scripture. An expository sermon highlights the main theme
of the passage along with its supporting points or themes. When
studying the passage ask yourself these two questions: “What is this
passage talking about?” and “How is it supporting what it is talking
about?” Your answer to the first question is your theme or main point.
The answers to your second question will form your sub-points.

J. I. Packer makes the point that each passage in Scripture, usually

identified as a paragraph, is a unit of thought, which communicates
one main thought with supporting points.

“A sermon is a single utterance; therefore it must have a single

subject, its divisions (which should be clearly marked, to help the

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listener follow and remember) should act like the joints of a telescope:
‘each successive division . . . should be as an additional lens to bring
the subject of your text nearer, and make it more distinct.”53

E. Compare your passage with other Scriptures. This is the rule or

standard of interpretation that the Reformers rediscovered. Let
Scripture interpret Scripture.

F. Then use good, solid, and trusted commentaries to check your finished
exegetical conclusions. If your work results in conclusions never
before arrived at in over 2000 years of church history, you may want
to start all over at Step A.

G. Once you have a grasp on what the passage is saying in its

grammatical, historical, geographical, and cultural context you should
outline it.

For instance, in Matthew 28:19-20, the main verb denoted by the

Zodhiates’ Word Study New Testament as aima (an aorist active
imperative verb) is “make disciples” [The KJV has incorrectly translated
the Greek verb  (matheteusate) as teach.] What appear
as a verb in English but is actually a participle in Greek is the word Go
that begins the sentence in verse 19 in most versions. Usually, when
this passage is preached by someone unfamiliar with the Greek text,
the main thrust in their message is To go rather than to make
disciples. God is not commanding us to go as is so often preached—
He is commanding us to make disciples in our going (to work, to
school, to play, to shop, to eat out, etc.) The other participles in this
passage are baptizing and teaching. You can see this in Zodhiates’
codes above the words.

Thus a working exegetical outline of Matthew 28:19-20 could look like:

The Great Commission is To Make Disciples of All The Nations. (19b)

I. The Means of Making Disciples (19-20a)

A. By going. (19a)

B. By baptizing. (19c)
53
J. I. Packer, Collected Shorter Writings of J. I. Packer, vol. 3 (United Kingdom: Paternoster Press,
1999), p. 271.

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C. By teaching them to obey all that Jesus commanded. (20a)

II. The Power in Making Disciples (20b)

A. The Person of Christ.

B. The Presence of Christ.

5. Principlize the text for communication and application.

Preachers must never preach their exegetical outline! The exegetical outline
is your guide to what the passage you are preaching says and means. It
provides your sermon with structure and organization but, people are not fed
by exegetical outlines alone, regardless of how well illiterated it is. Whereas,
your sermon outline is a helpful tool for you—you must preach the passage
not the outline. (You savvy?)

Therefore, take your outline and turn its points into principles that not only
communicate the meaning of each section of the passage but also provide a
means by which your audience can apply the principles.

Start with the MAIN POINT of what the passage is teaching and again this
will usually be related to the main verb or the primary subject of the passage.
Keep in mind that as in English, the Greek language as well as the Hebrew
utilizes paragraphs, although not called that, as that which encompasses and
communicates one major thought or thesis. Therefore, in studying your
passage you must identify the major thought or theme of the paragraph you
are studying. As J.H. Jowett put it in the Yale Lectures on Preaching:

“I have a conviction that no sermon is ready for preaching, not ready for
writing out, until we can express its theme in a short, pregnant sentence as
clear as crystal.”54

Consider the following advice:

“A sermon should be a bullet and not buckshot. Ideally each sermon is the
explanation, interpretation, or application of a single dominant idea supported
by other ideas, all drawn from one passage or several passages of
Scripture.”55

54
J. H. Jowett, The Preacher: His Life and Work (reprint, Grand Rapids: Baker, 1968), p. 133.
55
Haddon W. Robinson, Biblical Preaching, p. 34.

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Listen—if you can’t identify the main theme or thought in the

passage you are preaching you really have nothing to preach. To go
into the pulpit without knowing what the passage is primarily
communicating is to go in unprepared and as a liability to those who
will be listening to you. Remember this—a mist in the pulpit
produces a fog in the pew.

It is also important to realize that all of the supporting ideas or points of your
sermon should be related. Each sermon should have one primary theme with
supporting sub-points and these sub-points must relate to the major theme.

“Sermons seldom fail because they have too many ideas; more often than not
they fail because they deal with unrelated ideas.”56

Consider this example of principlizing an exegetical outline and turning it into

an expositional outline.

Our Divinely Authoritative Commission As Disciples of Christ Is To

Make Other Disciples By Following His Procedure And By Utilizing His
Power.

I. Jesus’ procedure for making disciples of all nations requires three things.
(19-20a)

A. To make disciples of all nations we must be involved in sharing

Christ wherever and whenever we go anywhere, any time, and
any place. (19a)

B. To make disciples of all nations we must ensure that those who

believe in Christ publicly identify themselves with Him in believer’s
baptism. (19b)

C. To make disciples of all nations we must teach those who have

believed in Christ and have publicly identified with Christ all of
Christ’s commands so they will know how to live as followers of
Christ. (20a)

56
Ibid. p. 33.

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II. Jesus power and authority for making disciples of all nations is given to
us in Himself. (20b & c)

A. The power and authority to make disciples of all nations is found

in Christ. (20b)
B. The power and authority to make disciples of all nations is found
in the abiding presence of Christ. (20c)

6. Put together a plan for preaching what you have learned through your study.

At this point in the expositional process the preacher should know what the
passage means and should already have worked out an outline to help in
organizing what the main points of the passage are. In a sense, he has put
together a skeleton and now simply needs to add some meat, muscle, and
skin to it. In other words, his expositional outline needs a title, an
introduction, illustrations, and a conclusion to make it presentable for public
consumption.

Your message should have three main parts: an introduction, body, and
conclusion.

The Introduction

Your sermon introduction needs to do several things all at the same time. It
needs to grab the attention of your hearers and give them the desire to want
to hear what you have to say. As an old Russian proverb says: It is the same
with men as with donkeys: whoever would hold them fast must get a very
good grip on their ears.”

The opening words of your sermon, then must go after the minds of your
audience so as to grab their attention and force them to listen to you. The
scribes and Pharisees in Matthew 23 had no problem with lack of
attentiveness when Jesus began His message to them with, “But woe to you
scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. . .”

Start your sermon with an opening statement that demands your hearers
listen to you because you have grabbed ahold of their ears. In quoting Paul
O’Neil, a writer for Life Magazine Robinson writes:

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“Always grab the reader by the throat in the first paragraph, sink your
thumbs into his windpipe in the second and hold him against the wall until
the tag line.”57

Another way of starting your sermon so as to grab the ears of your listeners
is by using some sort of story that relates and in fact introduces what you are
going to be preaching about. A story or a joke merely for the sake of telling
a story or a joke is entertainment and has nothing to do with preaching.
However, a true story, historical event, or even a humorous story or joke that
directly relates to the main idea you are trying to get across in your sermon is
certainly appropriate and should be used.

Keep in mind that the introduction also introduces the passage and its main
idea to the congregation so everything you communicate in the introduction
should relate to these two elements—the passage and the main idea of the
passage.

Your introduction should only be as long as is necessary to grab the ears of

your hearers and introduce the sermon to them. As the old saying goes,
Once you get water, stop pumping.

There is one caution that must be addressed in this subject of introducing

your sermon and that is don’t use the introduction to offer a pre-emptive
apologize for why your sermon may turn out to be a dud. Such remarks as:

“Well, I had a really busy week this week and. . . .”

“I’ve really been struggling with a cold the last couple days and. . .”

“My other job has kind of been taking more time than I expected and .
. . . .”
have no place in your sermon. These kind of remarks, while possibly evoking
a certain level of sympathy for you also clue your audience in on the fact that
you are not as prepared as you should be and they’re in for a long morning.

The Body of The Sermon

The body of your sermon, of course, should be made up of your main theme
and all the sub-points that support it. Essentially, the body of the sermon is
your expositional outline with supporting Scripture and illustrations. In a
nutshell, it is the explanation of the passage.

57
Ibid. pp. 161-162.

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While it is important to refer to other passages of Scripture in order to

support the arguments you are making from the passage you are preaching—
don’t make it a point to preach two and three other sermons on these texts.
Use them, explain them, and tie them in to your preaching text but do not
preach them as separate sermons within a sermon.

The Conclusion

Whereas, the introduction is likened to the plane taking off, the conclusion of
your sermon is likened to landing the airplane. Every preacher needs to
know when he is done and then stop. He must know how to tie his message
together, restate his theme and main points, and conclude his sermon. As
Robinson so aptly writes:

“The purpose of the conclusion is to conclude—not merely to stop. It should

be more than a swipe at getting out of an awkward situation: ‘May God help
us to live in light of these great truths.’ It should be more than asking the
congregation to bow in prayer so that the preacher can sneak off when
they’re not looking. He should conclude, and the sermon should produce a
feeling of finality. Like a lawyer, the minister asks for a verdict [I would have
said, Like a lawyer, the preacher demands a verdict]. The congregation
should see the idea entire and complete, and listeners should know and feel
what God’s truth demands of them.

Directly or indirectly the conclusion answers the question, So what? What

difference does this make? And the people face another question: Am I
willing to allow God to make that difference in my experience?”58

As William Sangster put forthrightly:

“Having come to the end, stop. Do not cruise about looking for a spot to
land, like some weary swimmer coming in from the sea and splashing about
until he can find a shelving beach up which to walk. Come right in, and land
at once. Finish what you have to say and end at the same time.”59

[It is my practice to write out my sermon after I have done my exegetical

homework. In my sermon manuscript I write out my introduction, body, and
conclusion, including all of my illustrations. I do this for a couple reasons. In
the processing of writing out my sermon I am forced to make my thoughts
exact and succinct. Second, I get some idea of how long the sermon will go.
For instance it usually takes me 45 to 50 minutes to preach a sermon that in
written form contains 2800 to 3000 words. Third, I have the sermon in its

58
Ibid. p. 167.
59
William E. Sangster, The Craft of Sermon Construction (reprint, Philadelphia: Westminster, 1951), p.
150.

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completed form for reuse later or for publication of some sort later down the
road. Let me clarify one thing however—I don’t read from my manuscript
when I am preaching my sermon. I simply refer to it if need be.]

Summed up, expository sermons are prepared by reading the Book of

the Bible that the passage you are preaching is in over and over again,
reading the particular passage you are preaching over and over again,
interpreting the passage in its grammatical, historical, cultural, and
geographical context, finding the main point and supporting points of the
passage, organizing the main points and sub-points into an outline,
turning the points into principles, developing an expositional outline, and
adding illustrations

7. Practice what you preach. (If your sermon preparation isn’t impacting and
influencing you to some action—it won’t do it for anyone else either.)

8. Practice what you are about to preach. (You’d be surprised at how many
pertinent thoughts will come to mind as you audibly work through your
sermon. This allows you to have some sense of how long your sermon is as
well.)

9. Preach the sermon.

A. Be well-rested. (This is an issue more of personal discipline than anything

else. If your sleep was interrupted due to some emergency there is no
need to mention it in the message. Let the Lord overcome your lack of
sleep as you preach.)

B. Be natural. Do not develop a “preaching voice” or other mannerisms not

indigenous to you.

C. Use inflection in your speech. Use pitch and pauses for emphasis. Don’t
be monotone.

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D. Speak clearly and don’t mumble.

E. Use appropriate gestures.

F. Look at your audience or at least at the back wall just directly over their
heads.

G. Scan your audience.

H. Try not to get tied to your notes.

I. Don’t bring attention to your little mistakes such as mispronouncing a

word, loosing your place in your notes, loosing your train of thought, etc.
Your listeners won’t fixate on those things unless you do.

J. Watch out for “nervous fillers” such as “Um”, clearing your throat multiple
times, shuffling your notes, etc.

10. Pray that the Lord will use your sermon in the lives of your listeners.

Tools of The Trade

1. A good Bible Version With Paragraph Divisions

The best Bible version I have found for sermon preparation is the New
American Standard Version (NASV). I have also heard that the new English
Standard Version (ESV) is very good. I would have no problem using the
New King James Bible (NKJV) either. While being a very readable and also a
very popular Bible version, the New International Version (NIV) is not the
best version for use in Bible study or sermon preparation. The reason for this

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is that the NIV is not a “word for word” translation but a “thought for
thought” translation. This means that the translators took the liberty of
interpreting what they believed the intent of the author’s words meant and
then recorded in the NIV that perceived intent rather than simply translating
the words. This philosophy of translation is known as textual
contextualization. Whereas, there is a place for this, especially in translating
the Bible into certain tribal languages around the world, the person who is
studying the Bible for himself or to teach others really needs a Bible that has
as few biases as possible. This being the case, those versions, which are
“word for word” translations are the better suited for Bible study and sermon
preparation.

Paragraph divisions, while not to be blindly relied upon, do help in trying to

determine the precise unit of thoughts in a passage of Scripture. Since a
paragraph contains one main unit of thought with other supporting sub-
thoughts or themes, a Bible divided this way is a big help in determining
where a unit of thought begins and ends. Typically, in expository preaching,
you are attempting to teach through one paragraph at a time.

2. Biblical Language Tools

You, as the preacher, are responsible before God of studying out a text of
Scripture so as to know what He said so as to explain what God has said to
His people. Therefore, you better be able to figure out what God has said.
Simply using a commentary to find out what John MacArthur thinks God has
said is not good enough. You will be held accountable for what you taught
not what MacArthur taught. Thus, you need to be able to use tools which
allow you to understand the original languages.

One of the best and easiest to use for the person who has not had the
benefit of actually learning the original languages or who has forgotten them,
is the Zodhiates Word Study Old Testament and the Zodhiates Word Study
New Testament. Along with these you should obtain the corresponding
coded dictionaries. These books will give you access to the basic definitions
of the biblical words in their original language as well as what their respective
parts of speech are. Again, these tools are essential to the person who does
not know the biblical languages. However, as essential as they are, they are
only the beginning of a good biblical language tool library.

Other excellent language tools are: The Theological Wordbook of the Old
Testament (TWOT) [this 2 volume set is keyed to the Strong’s numbering
system, which Zodhiates is as well], Dictionary of New Testament Words (3

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volumes), Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (12 volumes), and of

course Strong’s Concordance.

3. Greek and Hebrew Grammars

Whereas, in Zodhiates you can see that a certain Greek verb is an aorist
imperative, what does that mean? How does it relate to the other words in
the sentence? What does it indicate about the meaning of the sentence? A
Greek grammar is essential to helping you understand how the parts of a
sentence relate to each other to form the intended meaning of the author.
This is called “syntax”. Some of the best that I have used and still use are:
A Manual Grammar of The Greek New Testament by H. E. Dana and Julius R.
Mantey, Grammar of the Greek New Testament in Light of Historical Research
by A. T. Robertson, as well as his Word Pictures in the New Testament, J.
Gresham Machen’s classic, New Testament Greek for Beginners, and the
grammar being used in many Bible colleges and seminaries today, Basics of
Biblical Greek by William D. Mounce (this is the one I use to teach Greek to
my kids).

The same is true for Hebrew. A good Hebrew grammar can help you
understand the syntax of a sentence. Thomas O. Lambdin’s Introduction To
Biblical Hebrew is one that provides much help to the novice in Hebrew.
Another good one is Biblical Hebrew—An Introductory Grammar by Page H.
Kelly.

4. A Greek New Testament Interlinear & A Hebrew Old Testament Interlinear

A Greek Interlinear New Testament is simply a Greek text with the English
words underneath the corresponding Greek words. A Hebrew Interlinear Old
Testament is the same, only with Hebrew instead of Greek words. Whereas
an interlinear text of the Bible in the original languages is not a necessity, it is
helpful to see how the original words of the biblical text are placed within a
sentence and see the English words which correspond to them. It also
provides the reader with a very literal reading of the text of Scripture, which
can also be helpful in translation work. Certainly, the best thing is to learn
Greek or Hebrew but if you can’t, an interlinear text is a good investment.

5. Bible Background Books

When involved in interpreting a passage of Scripture it is important to

remember that you are involved in a process of bridging several gaps in order

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to understand the particular passage the way the original readers would have
understood it. The importance of this is that unless you bridge these gaps
and discover what the passage meant to the original readers you will not be
able to interpret it correctly. Thus, these gaps of language, history, culture,
and geography need to be bridged so that you, the interpreter, can
understand the text of Scripture in the same way the original readers of that
passage did. For instance, in Romans 12:20 Paul tells us that in feeding and
providing liquid refreshment to our enemies we are actually heaping “burning
coals on his head”. Many interpreters have concluded that this means that in
helping our enemies we are actually heaping more judgment upon them in
the day of judgment. Thus, if you want to get even with your enemies just
be nice to them.

However, a little digging in the cultural background reveals another

interpretation that is far more consistent with the overall context of the
passage. In the day in which Paul is writing, meals were cooked on small
charcoal fires. If a family’s fire went out in the middle of the night and they
woke up to cold coals in the morning the woman of the house would have to
find someone who would let her have some of their hot coals so she could
get her fire going again and be able to cook breakfast for her family. Since
hot coals would have to be carried on an earthenware platter on the head or
in a small box with holes which served as a sort of indoor stove, the woman
who needed hot coals would go to a neighbor’s home and ask to have some
of that household’s coals. In giving the needy woman a couple hot coals, the
neighbor was being neighborly. In heaping their hot burning coals upon her
head, they were demonstrating sacrificial love.

With this cultural background in mind the passage makes much more sense
and fits the context of Paul’s teaching that we are to overcome evil with
good.

Some very good Bible background tools are: Manners and Customs of Bible
Lands by Fred H. Wright, Halley’s Bible Handbook by H. H. Halley, Sketches
of Jewish Social Life by Alfred Edersheim, The Bible Almanac edited by J. I.
Packer, Merril C. Tenny, and William White, Jr., and Eerdmans’ Handbook to
the Bible, edited by David Alexander.

6. Bible Surveys and History Books

In order to get a handle on what a particular passage of Scripture means you

must have a grip on the entire Bible book in which that passage is found. In
addition, it is also necessary to understand how that particular Bible book fits
within the whole of the biblical context itself. There are several kinds of

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books available to help the interpreter with this task. Some of these are: A
Survey of Israel’s History by Leon Wood, A Popular Survey of The Old
Testament by Norman L. Geisler, A History of Israel by John Davis and John
Whitcomb, New Testament Introduction by Donald Guthrie, A Survey of The
New Testament by Robert Gundry, The Words and Works of Jesus by J.
Dwight Pentecost, and Alfred Edersheim’s Old Testament Bible History and
The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah.

7. Commentaries

Good commentaries written by reliable expositors of Scripture are invaluable

tools. The good commentary acts not only as a teacher in helping you to
better understand the text of Scripture you are studying but can also help in
determining how to communicate the passage. Finally, good commentaries
act as quality control tools by which you can check your exegetical work.

As Spurgeon advised:

In order to be able to expound the Scriptures, and as an aid to your

pulpit studies, you will need to be familiar with the commentators: a
glorious army, let me tell you, whose acquaintance will be your delight
and profit. Of course, you are not such wisacres as to think or say
that you can expound Scripture without assistance from the works of
divines and learned men who have labored before you in the field of
exposition. If you are of that opinion, pray remain so, for you are not
worth the trouble of conversion, and like a little coterie who think with
you, would resent the attempt as an insult to your infallibility. It
seems odd, that certain men who talk so much of what the Holy Spirit
reveals to themselves, should think so little of what he has revealed to
others.60

There is an abundance of commentaries, both multi-volume sets and single

volume commentaries on the whole Bible, available to the preacher today.
While not being able to mention all that are good, here are some of the best
multi-volume commentary sets that I have used in my own sermon
preparation: The MacArthur New Testament Commentary by John MacArthur
(presently has 25 volumes and is still in the process of being completed),
Commentary on the New Testament (12 volumes) by R. C. Lenski, The
Expositor’s Bible Commentary (12 volumes) edited by Frank E. Gaebelein,
New Testament Commentary (12 volumes) by William Hendriksen (deceased)
and Simon J. Kistemaker, Matthew Henry’s Commentary on The Whole Bible
60
Charles H. Spurgeon, Commenting and Commentaries (reprint, Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1969), p.
1.

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(6 volumes) by the Puritan, Matthew Henry, The Bible Knowledge

Commentary (2 volumes) by John Walvoord and Roy Zuck, Biblical
Commentary on the Old Testament (11 volumes) by C. F. Keil and F.
Delitzsch, Calvin’s Commentaries (22 volumes) by John Calvin, and The
Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries (21 volumes) by D. J. Wiseman.

Individual Bible book commentaries by Martyn Lloyd-Jones, James M. Boice,

D. Edmond Hiebert, Charles Hodge, Leon Morris, F. F. Bruce, and Arthur W.
Pink are also outstanding additions to your library. There are certainly many
more but time and space prevent the mentioning of them all.

8. Theological Works

Those who make the best teachers of Scripture are those who make the best
learners. To truly be the best preacher of the Word of God that you can be
you will need to invest time in reading and studying theology. It is not
enough that you know your passage well but the rest of the Bible, from which
it comes and to which it is tied, not so well. It is not enough to be an expert
in one area of theology and a mere novice in the rest. If you are to preach
the Word of God in context, you cannot neglect its theological context, thus
the need for the preacher to be a student of theology and in particular
systematic theology.

In a nutshell, systematic theology is the discipline of considering and

organizing what the Bible teaches on any given subject. This definition takes
into account the need to study the Scriptures so as to collect, understand,
summarize, and organize (systematize) all that the Bible teaches about the
topics, which it addresses. This means that it is imperative to study and
preach the Scriptures in their theological context as well as their grammatical,
historical, cultural, and geographical contexts. The reason the theological
context is not given more of a priority in the construction of the sermon is
that if you do your work hermeneutical work carefully and properly, the
Bible’s own attribute of consistency with itself, will ensure your exegetical
conclusions are theologically sound and consistent with the rest of Scripture.
Thus, in this sense the importance of the theological context is that acts as a
grid by which you can check your conclusions to see if they are consistent
with the overall teaching of the Word of God.

Some good theological resources are: Systematic Theology by Louis Berkhof,

A Systematic Theology of the Christian Religion by J. Oliver Buswell,
Systematic Theology (3 volumes) by Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology by
Wayne Grudem, Foundations of the Christian Faith by James M. Boice,

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Institutes of The Christian Religion by John Calvin, and The Works of

Jonathan Edwards by Jonathan Edwards.

9. Books By & About Preachers

The best preacher is one who, in addition to his reading and study of the
Scriptures, also reads other preachers and scholars. Some of the best books
I have read that have helped me in my understanding of the Bible, theology,
God’s people, and preaching are: Desiring God, The Pleasures of God, When I
Don’t Desire God, Future Grace, Let The Nations Be Glad, Brothers, We Are
Not Professionals, and The Swan Series (biographical studies) all by John
Piper; The Vanishing Conscience, Ashamed of the Gospel, The Gospel
According to Jesus, Faith Works: The Gospel According to the Apostles, Our
Sufficiency in Christ, Rediscovering Expository Preaching, and Pastoral
Ministry, all by John MacArthur; Knowing God, Rediscovering Holines, A Quest
For Godliness, and Truth and Power, all by J. I. Packer; Walking With The
Giants and Living With The Giants, both are books that present biographical
sketches of the great preachers of the past by Warren Wiersbe; On Being A
Pastor by Derek Prime and Alistair Begg.

Undoubtedly, there are hundreds more that I could have mentioned, but
these will suffice in getting you started.

10. Books on Hermeneutics

Your skill as a skillful preacher of the Word of God is dependent to a

tremendous degree upon your skill as an interpreter of the Bible. You cannot
proclaim an authoritative word from the Lord apart from an authoritative
understanding of what the Lord has said. Thus, you will be wise to invest
much time in developing and honing your hermeneutical skills. The following
books can help: Protestant Biblical Interpretation by Bernard Ramm, Basic
Bible Interpretation by Roy Zuck, Toward an Exegetical Theology by Walter C.
Kaiser Jr., Knowing Scripture by R. C. Sproul, and How To Study Your Bible
by Kay Arthur.

11. Books on Homiletics

Another practice of good preachers is simply reading books about preaching

and how to preach. There are several to choose from. Here are some I have
read and recommend: Biblical Preaching: The Development and Delivery of
Expository Messages by Haddon W. Robinson, Lectures To My Students by
Charles Spurgeon, the prince of preachers, Biblical Preaching Today by John
Stott, Spirit Empowered Preaching by Arturo G. Azurdia III, The Supremacy

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of Preaching by John Piper, Feed My Sheep: A Passionate Plea for Preaching

edited by Don Kistler, Preaching & Preachers by Martyn Lloyd-Jones, and
Preaching by G. Campbell Morgan.

12. Illustration Helps

The best source of sermon illustrations that I have found is life. All of our
lives abound with illustrations of spiritual truths. The astute preacher is
always alert to notice and then note the things of normal life that make for
great sermon illustrations. Beyond that, I find that contemporary news
stories, historical events, humor, and quotes are great ways to illustrate
spiritual truths. Other sources for good illustrations are: Chuck Swindoll’s
The Tardy Oxcart, a book packed full of great sermon illustrations, Great
Stories & Quotes by Kent Hughes, Readers Digest, Encyclopedia of 7700
Illustrations by Paul Lee Tan, and Perfect Illustrations For Every Topic and
Occasion compiled by the editors of PreachingToday.com, and all of Paul
Harvey’s The Rest of The Story paperbacks.

What About Your Listeners?

Whereas, as the preacher, you are responsible for the quality of your sermon, you
cannot be solely responsible for its effect upon your hearers. Communication is a
two way street. While you need to be at your best in preaching, your audience
needs to be at its best in listening and responding if the Word you are preaching is
to have its greatest impact. In order for your listeners to get the most benefit from
your sermon there are at least three things they must care for prior to the sermon
ever being preached.

First, they must be personally ready to hear the Word preached. This means they
need to be in fellowship with God. This requires that they not be harboring any
unconfessed or unrepentant sin that would tend to quench the Spirit of God from
using the Word of God as it is preached in their lives as well as in the lives of others
present.

Second, they must be physically ready. This means they should be alert an
undistracted due to lack of sleep, hunger, thirst, needing to go to the bathroom, etc.
This may require, especially in the area of rest, that the listener go to bed early
Saturday night so as to be well-rested on Sunday. Regardless of whether it is a
good nights rest or having eaten a good breakfast before coming to church, the
listener should prepare for Sunday both spiritually and physically.

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Third, the listener should be prayerfully ready to listen to the preaching of the Word
of God so as to be attentive to it, understand it, retain it, and apply it. MacArthur
writes:

Expository preaching can be defined as a spiritual event through which

Almighty God Himself speaks His Word to the hearers of men and women so
that they might know and understand His will and obey it. So prayer is an
essential element in readying one’s heart to hear what God wants to
communicate through His appointed messenger.61

He goes on to explain that,

Two distinct, yet inseparable, objects summarize the format for preparatory
prayer: Pray for the preacher as he communicates God’s message and pray
for the ability to comprehend what God communicates . . . . Scripture
implores Christians to pray for their teachers . . . To receive the message
from God’s messenger with the greatest benefit, believers must pray for their
pastor’s ability to impart it.62

When God’s people pray for their pastor and his sermon preparation during the
course of the week, they will also find themselves praying for themselves to receive
the Word of God in a positive and promising way. Undoubtedly, they will also find
themselves, if their prayers are offered in the integrity of their hearts, dealing with
sin issues and attitudes that need to be corrected in order for the preaching to
benefit them the most. When they pray for their preacher they are in a sense being
put in the position of, as Jay Adams says, “breaking up the hard clods that have
formed in their own souls”63, which serve to prevent the seed of the Word from
taking root in their hearts.

What About Gospel Preaching & Gospel Invitations?

Years ago, I used to give a gospel invitation at the end of every message in which I
invited those who might desire to accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior to come
forward to pray with me. Then, after growing in my theology and after seeing
numerous people walk the aisle one week and then out the door never to be seen
again I decided to no longer make use of the “altar call” to have unbelievers come
forward to accept Christ. I will on occasion give an altar call to believers for the

61
John MacArthur, Jr. Rediscovering Expository Preaching, pp. 353-354.
62
Ibid.
63
Jay E. Adams, A Consumer’s Guide To Preaching (Wheaton: Victor, 1991), p. 7.

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purpose of publicly reaffirming their love and loyalty to Christ. I will also invite
people to come to the front for prayer or so that I can better share the gospel with
them but I no longer offer unbelievers the opportunity to walk the aisle to come
down to the front of the church to accept Christ. Furthermore, I don’t ask people to
walk the aisle and come to the front as a profession of their faith in Christ. This is
what baptism is for.

So how should preachers invite people to come to Christ? First and foremost, we
must understand what the gospel is. How we understand the gospel will determine
how we present the gospel and how we present the gospel will determine, to a large
degree, how those who are listening to us understand the gospel and its
implications for their lives, should they choose to believe it.

I learned my Calvinism for the most part from the Bible rather than a theology
course. Thus, I was able to avoid some of the error I see being advanced today in
the name of Calvinism, namely that of failing to understand that just as God as
ordained the end in salvation, He has also ordained the means and the means is the
public and private evangelism.

The means of or in evangelism are two-fold. First, there is to be a clear an

authoritative gospel presentation and second there must be a genuine acceptance
and embracing of the gospel message as true. We cannot, in our preaching and
teaching about the doctrines of election, predestination, and the sovereignty of God
deemphasize the need for a person to hear and respond to the gospel. True
Calvinism or as we should call it, true gospel preaching, while holding fast to the
absolute sovereignty of God in having chosen who will be saved, always invites any
who are listening to respond to the gospel command to repent. It is enough for us
to know God has elected whom He will save. It is more than enough and in fact
heresy for us to presume we know who these elect are or are not, thus all gospel
preaching should include a clear presentation of the gospel as well as a clear
invitation to respond, and instructions as to how to respond.

Our gospel presentations, while preaching, will vary but the irreducible minimum
that needs to be presented is four-fold. First, we must communicate that God our
creator and ultimate judge is holy and righteous. Second, we must ensure people
understand that they have rebelled against God and have thus alienated themselves
from God through their sin, and thus, have exposed themselves to His wrath, which
will culminate in their being sentenced to hell for all of eternity. Third, we must tell
them that God sent His Son the Lord Jesus Christ, who is fully God and fully man, to
die as the only payment for sin so that God could punish their sin in Christ and
forgive it in them. Finally, they must be told that they must repent of their sins that
is, turn away from their sins as their greatest pleasure to Christ, and believe in Jesus
Christ, trusting Him for the forgiveness of their sin and for reconciliation to God.

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Once we have presented this gospel we must urge them to respond to this gospel
by simply doing exactly what the gospel requires—repent and believe (Acts 20:21).
There is no need to cloud the issue by having them walk an aisle or even raise a
hand. If God has called them to Himself and you are presenting the gospel, they
will respond in such a way as to be saved. And then, as they are taught, they will
desire to make their private confession of faith a public profession of faith through
believer’s baptism. It is helpful to remind ourselves that we are not concerned with
people “making decisions” for Christ. We are concerned with people understanding
the gospel so that they can repent of their sins and turn to Christ as their only hope
of salvation.

Just as we ask unbelievers to place their confidence in the gospel for salvation we
must, as communicators of the gospel, have confidence in it to do its job without
adding our extra touches, which really do nothing but confuse the issue for most.

The question does arise as to whether the gospel is to be presented in every

preaching situation you find yourself. I don’t know that it is necessary for me to
include a formal presentation of the gospel every Sunday morning that I preach in
church. I usually do when I see visitors present or when the text I am preaching
from lends itself to doing so. I always include the gospel when preaching outside
the church at such events as funerals, weddings, and other events that will be
attended by unbelievers.

A Final Word About What It Takes To Preach An Expository Sermon

In summarizing what it takes to preach an expository sermon, perhaps no one has

described it better than this unknown listener of sermons. Here is his advice to you
and me regarding the man who desires to be a spokesman of God.

Fling him into his office. Tear the “Office” sign from the door and nail on the
sign, “Study.” Take him off the mailing list. Lock him up with his books and his
typewriter and his Bible. Slam him down on his knees before texts and broken
hearts and the flock of lives of a superficial flock and a holy God.

Force him to be the one man in our surfeited communities who knows about
God. Throw him into the ring to box with God until he learns how short his arms
are. Engage him to wrestle with God all the night through. And let him come out
only when he’s bruised and beaten into being a blessing.

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Shut his mouth forever spouting remarks, and stop his tongue forever tripping
lightly over every nonessential. Require him to have something to say before he
dares break the silence. Bend his knees in the lonesome valley.

Burn his eyes with weary study. Wreck his emotional poise with worry for God.
And make him exchange his pious stance for a humble walk with God and man.
Make him spend and be spent for the glory of God. Rip out his telephone. Burn
up his ecclesiastical success sheets.

Put water in his gas tank. Give him a Bible and tie him to the pulpit. And make
him preach the Word of the living God!

Test him. Quiz him. Examine him. Humiliate him for his ignorance of things
divine. Shame him for his good comprehension of finances, batting averages,
and political in-fighting. Laugh at his frustrated effort to play psychiatrist. Form a
choir and raise a chant and haunt him with it night and day—“Sir, we would see
Jesus.”

When at long last he dares assay the pulpit, ask him if he has a word from God.
If he does not, then dismiss him. Tell him you can read the morning paper and
digest the television commentaries, and think through the day’s superficial
problems, and manage the community’s weary drives, and bless the sordid
baked potatoes and green beans, ad infinitum, better than he can.

Command him not to come back until he’s read and reread, written and
rewritten, until he can stand up, worn and forlorn, and say, “Thus saith the
Lord.”

Break him across the board of his ill-gotten popularity. Smack him hard with his
own prestige. Corner him with questions about God. Cover him with demands for
celestial wisdom. And give him no escape until he’s back against the wall of the
Word.

And sit down before him and listen to the only word he has left—God’s Word. Let
him be totally ignorant of the down-street gossip, but give him a chapter and
order him to walk around it, camp on it, sup with it, and come at last to speak it
backward and forward, until all he says about it rings with the truth of eternity.

And when he’s burned out by the flaming Word, when he’s consumed at last by
the fiery grace blazing through him, and when he’s privileged to translate the
truth of God to man, finally transferred from earth to heaven, then bear him
away gently and blow a muted trumpet and lay him down softly. Place a two-

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edged sword in his coffin, and raise the tomb triumphant. For he was a brave
soldier of the Word. And ere he died, he had become a man of God.64

64
John MacArthur, Jr., Rediscovering Expository Preaching, pp. 348-349. (author unknown)

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Appendix I—Sermon from the Old Testament

[This is a sermon I preached from a series in the Book of Ecclesiastes in 2001]

Sermon Outline Ecclesiastes Tape 20

And You Are Counting On Whom???

Ecclesiastes 9:11-10:1

Believing in yourself and your abilities,

rather than in God and His wisdom, will get you
nowhere faster than you really want to go.

INTRODUCTION

Out of the night that covers me

Black as the Pit from pole to pole
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate

How charged with punishment the scroll,
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.

Now depending upon your reaction to William Ernest Henley’s poem, entitled,
Invictus, I can tell you whether or not you are a true Bible-believing Christian or a
Secular Humanist.

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If you agree with the poem that you are the master of your own fate and the
captain of your soul, as well as believe that you are your own final authority in life,
and you will answer to no higher standard than the one you create yourself then
you are a secular humanist.

A secular humanist is a person who has simply replaced God with man, God’s
authority with man’s authority, and God’s absolute unchanging standards of morality
with man’s relative and always changing suggestions of what may be right and
wrong depending upon how you view it.

Now I doubt, given that definition, that anyone here would say—“Yep, that’s me,
I’m a secular humanist.”

But how many of us who would never subscribe to blatant secular humanism throw
around such catch phrases as:
“You have to believe in yourself.”
“You need to look inside yourself for the answer.”
You have to do this for you and no one else.”
“Its all up to me.”
“I am my own best friend.”

You ask, what’s wrong with those phrases and what they communicate?

Well, they are simply a much shorter way of saying what Henley spent four stanzas
trying to say.

These phrases are the catch phrases for secular humanism and are completely the
opposite of what the Bible teaches.

These phrases are indicative of a belief in yourself as a good, self-sufficient person

who is able to operate independently of God.

They communicate the idea that you as a person, apart from God, have the answers
to life and its tough questions deep down inside of you.

They foster the notion that you are all you need and that God is really very
unnecessary in and to your life.

They all voice the belief that you as a person have the ability to do whatever you
wish without any interference from a supernatural personality who simply does not
exist or, who, if he does has no bearing or authority over your life.

Listen, for instance, to how one self-avowed humanist described his belief system:

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“Being a humanist gives me the freedom to be the person I want to

be and live my life as I see fit . . .”

Now, we have probably voiced the same sentiments many times in our own lives---
“I want to be the person I want to be and live my life as I see fit.” But now listen to
the rest of this man’s statement:

(So) I do not deny the existence of a god, I just don’t have a belief
in one.”

You see to believe that you have a right to “live your life as you see fit” , logically
demands that you do not believe in God as the ultimate authority over life—for then
you’d say—“I am responsible to live my life as God see’s fit.”

And if you don’t believe God is the ultimate and absolute authority in life you are a
secular humanist. And if you live your life as though God is not your ultimate and
absolute authority, regardless of what you claim to believe---you are living like a
secular humanist.

 So when we switch jobs because we see fit to do so and never give a thought
or should I say prayer to what God thinks---we are practicing secular
humanism.
 When a young adult chooses a college without having ever sought out God’s
counsel and direction—he or she is practicing secular humanism.
 When you engage in business of any kind without so much as having given
even the slightest thought for what God desires you are practicing secular
humanism.

Because secular humanism is the replacement of God and His Will with
you and your will.

Secular Humanism, as seen in the catch phrase, “You just need to believe in
yourself”, has also replaced “dependence upon God and His abilities” with
dependence “upon ourselves and our abilities”.

Listen to what the “Humanist Manifesto” says regarding dependence upon God:

“Traditional religions inhibit humans from helping themselves or

experiencing their full potentialities. Too often traditional faiths
encourage dependence (upon God) rather than independence (from God).
But we can discover no divine purpose or providence for the human
species . . . Humans are responsible for what we are or will become. No

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God will save us; we must save ourselves . . . Human life has meaning
because we create and develop our own futures.

And consider the words of one, Kaz Dziamka, a one-time professor at TVI here in
Albuquerque. In 1997 he wrote an article entitled, Why We Need To Teach
Secular Humanism. Listen to what he wrote and subsequently taught, in this the
first course in “secular humanism” taught at a technical/vocational institute in the
United States.

“The advantage of secular humanism is that it teaches us to be self-reliant

and rational, that we musn’t wait for or pray to (God) to solve our
problems. . . It is high time we brought the science of secular humanism
to the attention of all our high school and college students.”

And finally, consider for just a moment what the word “secular” means. According
to its Latin root, the word means, A way of life and thought that is pursued
without reference to God.

And this is exactly what our study today in the Book of Ecclesiastes is going to
address---the futility of pursuing a way of life and thought apart from God.

To be specific, God is going to explain in no uncertain terms, how dangerous it is to

live life as though you and I do not need Him or His involvement in our lives.

Read the text. Ecclesiastes 9:11-10:1

BIG IDEA: Believing in yourself and your abilities,

rather than in God and His wisdom, will get you
nowhere faster than you really want to go.

1. Confidence in yourself and your abilities does not guarantee success

because God eventually will bring the proud and the self-sufficient
to their knees. (9:11)

 Verse 11 is commenting on Solomon’s exhortation in verse 10. While we

are commanded by God to give our best effort to whatever our hand finds
to do—we must still recognize that our best is not enough. It is not our

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speed, our strength, our wisdom, our wealth, or our education that
ultimately brings success.

 In the Hebrew text the word “not” is used 5 times in the emphatic
position. So the text would read:

“. . . not to the swift is the race; not to the strong warrior is the battle;
not to the clever is the getting of bread; not to the intelligent is wealth;
not to the educated is popularity and opportunity.”

This use of the negative in an emphatic position is for the purpose of

driving home the point that believing in yourself and your own abilities will
not bring you success, meaning, or fulfillment in life. In fact, if anything,
trusting in yourself and your abilities will ultimately and eventually lead
you to disaster.

 The last phrase in verse 11 tells us why this philosophy of believing in

yourself will get you no where fast.

 “But (because) time and chance happen to them all.”

“Chance” comes from the Hebrew word, which means an

occurrence or event. It is usually used of a negative occurrence or
event such as judgment or discipline. Because it is joined by the
word time, the idea is that there is a time of judgment and
discipline for everyone who believes they are in control of their own
destiny simply because of their self-confidence and extraordinary
abilities.

Thinking you are in control of your own destiny and ultimate

success because of your confidence and belief in yourself and your
abilities is an affront to God. It is nothing more than pride in
yourself and God hates and judges our pride.

ILLUSTRATION

Remember Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 4:28-37.

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2. Confidence in yourself and your own abilities does not guarantee

success because you have no control over the events or end of your
life. (9:12)

 How absurd it is to believe you are in control of your life—when it is

obvious you are not in control of anything that comes unexpectedly—and
much of our lives are filled with the unexpected.

 How absurd it is to believe you are in control of your destiny—when your

destiny is death and you have no control over that.

3. Confidence in God and His wisdom guarantees success as God

defines it. (9:13-18)

A. But remember, God’s wisdom is not popular, rarely heeded,

and seldom respected. (9:16B)

B. And keep in mind, that even though self-confidence and

“believing in yourself” gets better press, God’s wisdom works.
(9:17)

C. But never forget, that while God’s wisdom is powerfully

effective, its effect is gradually nullified when mixed with
humanism. (9:18-10:1)

Solomon provides two examples of how wisdom is gradually nullified.

In verse 18, wisdom, while more effective than weapons of war can
still have its effects ruined by one sinner—one who is a fool. Then in
!0:1, Solomon, uses the illustration of dead flies ruining perfume to
help us see that “a little foolishness is weightier than wisdom and

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honor”. [A little foolishness goes a long way toward disrupting the

effects of wisdom]
CONCLUSION

Several years ago, an airliner filled to capacity crashed. When the investigators
from the FAA found the plane’s “Black Box”, they thought it would give them the
information they needed to discover what happened in the cockpit as the plane was
going down. And what they learned as they listened to the pilot, a man who had
the reputation of being self-sufficient, self-reliant, proud, and certainly one who had
no room for God in his life, was very surprising.

For as it became apparent to him that his plane was in trouble he began to curse
God—which would seem odd for a man who didn’t believe in God—I mean, why
blame someone who does not exist for your problems???

But then when it became obvious to him that he was not able to fix the problem and
that the plane was going to crash and he was going to die----He, this proud, self-
sufficient, and self-made man began to cry simply uttering over and over again:
“Oh God, Oh God, Oh God.” And then there was silence as he was ushered into
eternity.

You know, it doesn’t matter if you believe in God or not----He exists either way!

And one day, whether it be on this earth or in eternity those who are pursuing their
lives without him will be yanked up short and come face to face with the one they
had no use for and what a terrible day it will be.

What about you? Are you a Christian living like a Christian or are you living like a
secular humanist?
Remember, what you say you believe has very little to do with it---its how you live
that authenticates who you are and who you belong to.

And if this morning, you recognize that you have been living your life apart from
God—it is time to

1. Recognize that Jesus Christ, God the Son died for you at the cross of Calvary
to pay for all of your sin and then rose again the third day to prove that your
sin had indeed been paid for.

2. Repent of living your life without Him and surrender control of your life to
Him.

3. Accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.

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Appendix II—Sermon from the Gospels

[I preached this sermon during the Christmas Season in 2004]

What Jesus Desires And Why

John 17:24-26

It’s the day after Christmas and some of the questions being asked right here in this
room this morning are: “What did you get for Christmas?” or “Did you get what you
wanted for Christmas?” or “Did you like what you got for Christmas?”

And while there’s nothing wrong with such questions—I wonder if we’d be just as
interested to know what Jesus desires and why?

Well, I hope this subject will interest you because that is what we are going to
consider this morning and I think that as we answer the question “What does Jesus
want and why?” that all of us who know Christ as our Lord and Savior will find that
our best Christmas present is still yet to come.

Please go with me to John 17.

In this chapter of twenty-six verses we have Jesus’ prayer to His Father shortly
before He begins the last stage of His journey to Calvary.

This prayer, in effect, is Jesus’ last will and testament, so to speak. For in it He
acknowledges that the time has come for Him to give up His life for those who would
believe in Him (vv. 1-3); He states emphatically that He has finished the work His
father gave Him to do on earth (v. 4); He makes provisions for the spiritual care of
His followers (vv. 5-21); and then He makes His final and perhaps most important
desires known (vv. 22-26)

In verses 22-23, He requests that His followers be perfected in unity so that the
world would know that the Father had sent Him and loved those that received Him,
to the same degree that He loved Christ Himself.

And then in verses 24-26, Jesus reveals what it is that He desires the most in regard
to those who have repented of their sins and placed saving faith in Christ.

But not only does He reveal His most important desires—He also reveals why they
are so important.

Let’s take a look at these three verses and as we do what we will see is that:

Jesus desires that we who know Him be with Him where He is so that we can gaze
upon His glory and enjoy Him as much as the Father enjoys Him.

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1. Jesus Desires That We Who Know Him Be With Him. (24A)

 In addressing His Father specifically for the fifth time in His prayer, He
rather than asking for something in regard to us His followers—expresses
His divine will for us. And since according to John 10:30, the Father and
the Son are One—we can be assured that whatever the Son wills is what
the Father also wills because their wills are one and the same.

 And whereas, the NASV uses the word “desire”, the connotation in the
Greek word that is used here is that of a divine decree. The Greek word is
 and it is referring to the decreed will of God that will be accomplished
no matter what. Thus, Jesus is not so much asking for something in verse
24 as He is declaring His and the Father’s Divine Will in regard to those
whom the Father has given to the Son.

 This phrase, “they whom you have given me” is first used in this prayer
back in verse 2, where Jesus affirms His authority over all flesh, that to all
whom you have given Him, He may give eternal life. Thus, those who
have eternal life, which is defined for us in verse 3 as knowing God and
God the Son, are the very ones who have been given to the Son by the
Father. This truth is also found in John 10:22-30. Therefore, the people
who are being referred to in verse 24 are genuine believers—those whom
the Father has given to the Son.

 Now note what His will is in regard to us who know Him—It is His divine
will that we be with Him. In His statement, “Father, I desire that they also
whom you have given Me be with Me . . .” is stated as strongly as
possible in the original language. In fact, that last “Me” looks like “ME”. It
is in the emphatic position, which means there is no mistaking where
Jesus wants us to be—HE WANTS US TO BE WITH HIM.

 In other words, our eventual dying and going to be with the Lord is no
small matter to Him. In the strongest terms possible He is revealing to you
and I that His desire and will is that we eventually will be with Him. This is
His will—this is His desire! Therefore, as badly as you and I may feel
about ourselves and our failings, our Savior, knowing all there is to know
wants us home with Him.

 In fact, according to Luke 12:32, it is the Father’s great pleasure to give

us His Kingdom. Check this verse out and see!

2. Jesus Desires That We Who Know Him Be With Him Where He Is. (24B)

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 This next phrase, “where I am” is also emphatic in that the personal
pronoun “I” is emphatic in that the Greek phrase is used. This
translated into English would read this way, “where I, I am”. Thus, Jesus
wants there to be no mistaking His intentions toward those who know
Him—He wants them with Him where He is—and that place is Heaven!

 And while this is good enough for most of us—the fact that if we know
Jesus we are going to be with Him in Heaven—its not the end all as far as
Jesus is concerned—in fact, our going to Heaven when we die to be with
Jesus is merely the means to a much greater end. And that end or goal is
found in the very next phrase.

3. Jesus Desires That We Who Know Him Be With Him Where He Is So

That We Can Gaze Upon And Enjoy His Glory. (24C)

 The words “so that” indicate purpose. The purpose or the goal of our
going to Heaven is not to walk streets of gold and enjoy our mansions
sublime. The goal of heaven is that we will have the opportunity to gaze
for all of eternity upon Christ and His glory, completely unfettered by sin, in
glorified bodies with glorified eyes and minds.

 Thus, we will have an appetite, a hunger and a thirst, for Christ that is
unlimited in scope as well as a capacity that matches that appetite.
Heaven will be an “all you can eat buffet” of sorts in which we never get so
full we have to quit eating. Once released from the presence of sin in our
bodies, we will have an insatiable appetite and craving for Christ and His
glory as well as a limitless capacity to feast upon the glory of Christ.

 Whereas, Moses only had the capacity to gaze at the backside of God’s
glory and was unable to look into the face of God as a mortal unglorified
man (Exodus 33:18-23) we, when we are glorified will behold God in all of
His glory without a veil and face-to-face. When we get to Heaven and see
Christ—we will see Him who is very God of very God, Him who is the
radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His nature, Him in
whom all the fullness of deity resides in bodily form, Him who is the image
of the invisible God and as such is completely equal to God and still live.

 This is what Jesus longs for. This is what Jesus desires. He wants us to
see Him as He is and this is exactly how we will see Him according to 1
John 3;1-3.

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 Now if you’ll look back at Exodus 33:18-19, note the synonym God uses
for the word glory. Moses asks to see His glory and God’s reply is that He
will make all of His “goodness” pass before him. Now understanding that
everything God is and does is good and that there is no badness in God—
Moses was about to have all of God’s character, attributes, thoughts, and
majesty paraded before him but in his unglorified state he did not have the
capacity to take it all in nor could he even sneak a glimpse of God’s face
and survive.

 But we will have the capacity to see and enjoy all of God and we will look
directly into His face and live.

 It is not that we are unable to see Christ in glimpses of His glory now. In
fact according to 2 Corinthians 3:18 it is only as we gaze upon Christ as
presented to us in His Word that we are able to grow spiritually. But we
must realize and understand that whereas it may seem to us that we have
a tremendous appetite and capacity for Christ—in comparison to our
appetite and capacity for Christ once we are in heaven—we are really
nibbling and snacking right now. The other thing we must keep in mind is
that now we are beholding Him by faith as we believe the Word whereas
then we will see Him face-to-face. We often fail to understand the terrible
toll sin has taken upon us even in our redeemed state of life. It limits our
appetite for Christ as well as our capacity for Him. But once sin is
removed from us—there will be no limit to the enjoyment we will
experience as we gaze upon Him and His goodness in all of His glory.

 But even this is not the end-all of heaven. Rather, even seeing Christ in
all of His glory is the means to a greater end or goal.

4. Jesus Desires That We Who Know Him Be With Him Where He Is And
Gaze Upon His Glory So That We Will Love, Treasure, Enjoy, And
Delight In Christ As Much As God The Father Does. (25-26)

 Here in verse 26, we have unfolded for us in 30 words the reason why
God sent His Son to save us and bring us safely home to Heaven for all of
eternity. We have, in this one verse the essence of God’s divine goal in
saving us.

 And here it is—Jesus’ divinely decreed purpose in saving us was that the
pleasure, enjoyment, and love that God the Father has in His Son might
become ours. In other words, Jesus saved us so that we will become as
happy as God the Father is.

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 As I was studying this out and coming to the conclusions I am sharing with
you the thought occurred to me that this sounds an awful lot like
something Jonathan Edwards or John Piper would say—so I did a little
research and what I found didn’t surprise me.

 Condensing and rewording Edwards thoughts about seeing the

glorified Christ who is the express image of the invisible God, Piper
writes:

“Who can look upon the Son’s face shining in full strength? The
answer is that God can. The radiance of the Son’s face shines first
and foremost for the enjoyment of his Father. ‘This is the Son
whom I love; he is my pleasure. You must fall on your face and
turn away, but I behold my Son in his radiance every day with love
and never-fading joy.’

. . . surely this is the one thing implied in John 17:26 that the day is
coming when I will have the capacity to delight in the Son the way
the Father does.

My fragile eyes will get the power to take in the glory of the Son
shining in His full strength just the way the Father does.

The pleasure God has in His Son will become my pleasure, and I
will not be consumed, but enthralled forever.”

 The Scriptures are very clear in telling us that the Father delights in and
finds His pleasure in His Son.

 Isaiah 42:1 “Behold my Servant, whom I uphold; My chosen One

in whom I delight.
 Matt. 3:17 “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.”
 Matt. 12:18 “Behold my Servant whom I have chosen, my
beloved in whom my soul delights.”
 Matt. 17:5 “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well-
pleased.”

 And it is important to understand that the Father has always loved and
delighted Himself in His Son—thus the reason for the last phrase in John
17:24 (“for you loved me before the foundation of the world.”). There has
never been a time when the Father has not delighted Himself and
found complete enjoyment in His Son.

 And because Jesus is One with the Father (John 10:30), we must
conclude that the pleasure God the Father has in His Son is actually
pleasure in Himself. Since Jesus Christ is the express image of God

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and the radiance of God and the fullness of deity in bodily form and
is equal with and to God, and is in fact God—God’s delight and
pleasure in the Son is actually delight and pleasure in Himself.

 As Jonathan Edwards explained it, “the deepest and most foundational joy
of God is the joy he has in His own perfections as He sees them reflected
in the glory of His Son.” Paul referred to this in 2 Corinthians 4:6 when
he speaks of the glory of God in the face of Christ. In other words,
when we gaze into the face of Jesus—we are gazing into the face of God
because all that God is—He sees reflected fully and perfectly in the Son.

 And because of the fact that He sees Himself and all His character and
perfections reflected back in His Son--God is infinitely pleased, delighted
and happy. And while this would be outrageous for us to say, it would be
idolatry for God not to revel in Himself because He is perfection and of the
greatest value.

 I have been working through a book recommended to me by a very godly

man. Its title is The Life of God in The Soul of Man. It was written in the
1670’s by a young man by the name of Henry Scougal. In his book
Scougal states that “the worth and excellency of a soul is measured
by the object of its love”. If this is true and I think it is—then God is the
most excellent and worthy of all beings—for He loves His Son--Who is
the most worthy and excellent of beings--the very image of His own
glory from all of eternity. For God not to love His Son and find the
greatest pleasure and happiness in seeing Himself reflected in His Son
would make Him unworthy and certainly less than excellent.

 Now go back with me to John 17:25-26 and see if this is not exactly what
Jesus said. He states in verse 26 that He has made the Father’s Name
(character and perfections and glory [Exodus 33:18-19]) known and will
continue to make it known (in heaven) so that the love with which the
Father had and has for the Son may become ours.

Scougal went on to say that: “The most ravishing pleasures, the most
solid and substantial delights that human nature is capable of, are
those, which arise from the endearments of a well-placed and
successful affection.”

In other words, in giving us the opportunity to love the most worthy

and excellent Being—God The Son--with the very love that God The
Father Himself loves the Son with—we have been given the
opportunity to experience and enjoy ravishingly divine pleasure, joy,
delight, and happiness.

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 A day is coming when the happiness and joy and enjoyment that God the
Father has in His Son will be ours as well—thus we will become as happy
as God—and this is what God created us for—to share in His happiness
and joy.

 Thus, the reason why, the Greatest Commandment is to LOVE THE

LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, ALL YOUR MIND, AND
ALL YOUR SOUL. You see in commanding us to love Him, the greatest
and most excellent Being, with the intensity of our entire being—God was
giving us the key to eternal and never-ending happiness.

 And you see this ultimately glorifies God because He is most glorified in
us when we are most satisfied or happy in Him.

CONCLUSION

So how do we apply a message like this?

Well I hope that:

1) First of all I trust that We will be confident that if we belong to Christ we will be
with Jesus where He is when we die. This should give us the confidence that
we are secure and accepted in Christ.

2) I hope We truly understand that we can only grow in Christ as we are gazing
upon Christ thus while we are living on this earth we must continually be in
His Word that we might see Him and be transformed into His image from
glory to glory (2 Cor. 3:18).

3) I hope We will keep in the forefront of our minds the fact that when we see
Jesus—we will be like Him—because we will see Him as He is. And it is this
hope that will motivate us to purify ourselves just as he is pure (1 John 3:1-3).
The saying, “You’re too heavenly minded to be any earthly good”, is not
biblical. We do the most earthly good when we are most heavenly minded.

4) I hope We will grasp that if we are truly gazing upon Christ and seeing Him in
His glory, to the degree we are able on this earth and in these sin-laden
bodies of ours, our worship should be transformed from that which is
characterized by passive restraint to passionate exuberance.

As John Piper writes: God’s delight in being God is not sung the way it
should be, with wonder and passion, in the worship places of the world.
And we are the poorer for it.

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5) I also hope is that as we meditate upon and gaze upon Christ and experience
to the degree we are able, the pleasure and delight that the Father has in and
for His Son, and as we through gazing upon Jesus become more and more
like Him—that we will become increasingly more satisfied with Jesus to the
point that we will pursue Him more than anything else in life.

Remember the only way to break the habits of sin and the enticements of sin
that so easily trip us up is to find more pleasure in pursuing Christ than in
pursuing sin and ultimately to have more pleasure in Christ than in sin.

6) And finally, it is my great hope and desire that God will be increasingly more
glorified in us as we are increasingly finding our happiness and joy in Him.

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Appendix III—A Sermon from The New Testament Epistles

[This sermon is from a series I preached on Colossians in 2005]

The Purpose Driven Pastor

Colossians 1:25-29

In his book, Pagans In the Pews, Peter Jones, a professor of New Testament Studies at
Westminster Seminary, states that the reason why we have so many paganized Christians
in America is that we have so many paganized pulpits in America. In essence, he believes
that our churches are filled with pagans because our pulpits are filled with pagans or at least
paganized preaching and approaches to ministry.

I think he’s right.

Now what is meant by “paganized preaching” and “paganized approaches to ministry”?

Essentially, this is preaching and ministry that elevates religious and spiritual experience
over biblical explanation. In other words, it is the diminishing of the Word of God for an
experience of God.

In fact, in reading a book entitled, Unlearning Church, which was written in 2002, the author,
who is part of a new movement called the “emergent church movement” writes that: “This is
a spiritual age in which people are looking for an experience of God more than an
explanation of God.”

The book then provides an example of how one church in their movement helps people
experience God.

“In one service about brokenness, we had lots going on simultaneously: lighting, visual art,
scent, hearing, and touch. The room was set up so “experiencers” saw a large pile of
broken tiles as they entered. The lighting was in earthy oranges, browns, and burgundies,
accented by more than a hundred candles and candelabra. . . TV monitors showed images
of deep sadness, tragedy, and brokenness. The huge center screen displayed digital art
with the word ‘restoration’. In front of the low stage was a pool of water lined with rocks and
broken pieces of tile.

The service began with a line from a popular song, ‘I feel so broken I don’t know if I will ever
get put back together again.’ Participants were given their own piece of broken tile. A
poetic reading, interspersed with readings from Psalm 51, walked them into a reflection on
their own need for restoration.

Worshippers then had multiple options for response. They could receive Communion,
laying their broken tile at the feet of a digital crucifix. They could go to an anointing station

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for prayers of restoration. Or they could float tea candles in a large pool in front of the
stage, symbolizing a need to reconnect to Jesus, who as light of the world, can show his
light on our interior space and heal our woundedness. Some wanted to experience all three
options.

Now is this stuff really taking place in so-called evangelical churches today? And is it being
endorsed by the Christian community at large?

Well, let me answer that with a quote from Rick Warren, the real leader and spokesman for
the “seeker-driven church movement”. In endorsing the book “, The Emerging Church” by
Dan Kimball, which endorses the kind of religious experiences I just described to you,
Warren writes:

This book is a wonderful, detailed example of what a purpose-driven church can look like in
a post-modern world. My friend, Dan Kimball, writes passionately from his heart, with a deep
desire to reach emerging generations and culture. While my book, The Purpose-Driven
Church, explained what the church is called to do, Dan’s book explains how to do it with the
cultural-creatives who think and feel in post-modern terms. You need to pay attention to him
because times are changing.

And Warren, who actually is a contributing author to Kimball’s book, is not only supportive of
the “emerging church”, he believes that it is exactly what is required at this time. In fact, he
believes that this is what “the purpose-driven church model” that he founded will become in
the future.

This is what Brian McLaren, the founding Father of the Emerging Church Movement also
says. Believing that the emergent church movement is to usher in a new reformation in the
next hundred years listen to who he believes will be seen as its real author.

“One hundred years from now church leaders will be studying the movement known as
“purpose-driven churches”. They will find Rick Warren as its architect and the Purpose-
driven Church as its blueprint.”

And lest you think, I’m bashing Rick Warren and the purpose-driven church philosophy of
ministry without reason this morning—let me tell you why his philosophy of ministry is so
dangerous.

Warren writes in Kimball’s book that, “In the past twenty years, spiritual seekers have
changed a lot. In the first place, there are a whole lot more of them. There are seekers
everywhere. I’ve never seen more people so hungry to discover and develop the spiritual
dimension of their lives. That is why there is such a big interest in Eastern thought, New
Age Practices, Mysticism, and the Transcendent. . . Today seekers are hungry for symbols
and metaphors and experiences and stories that reveal the greatness of God. Because
seekers are constantly changing, we must be sensitive to them like Jesus was; we
must be willing to meet them on their own turf and speak to them in ways they
understand.”

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Now if you follow Warren’s reasoning through to its logical and practical conclusion—if it is
necessary for the church to meet “pagans” on their own turf in order to become relevant to
them—the church has to become paganized.

You see, once a pastor and church begin the move to become relevant to the
unbelieving world—where does it stop?

As Peter Jones surmised, We have pagans in the pews because pastors have paganized
the church.

Richard Mayhue, professor of pastoral ministries at the Master’s Seminary stated ten years
ago that:

“Current changes beginning to overtake the church could distinctively mark the twenty-first
century church. A growing number of respected evangelicals believe that the present
redirection of the church toward being less biblical and more acceptable to man will
ultimately lead to a Christ-condemned church.”

Mayhue, in prescribing the cure for this coming crisis, went on to say:

“By using Scripture to answer the question ‘What is a pastor to be and do?’. . . the church
can obediently realign herself with God’s revealed purposes for the bride of Christ.

Thus, Mayhue agrees with the premise that the reason we have so many pagans in the
pews is that we have pagans or at least paganized approaches to ministry in the pulpits.

And if the church is to recover her scriptural identity, direction, and mission she must be led
by pastors who are not paganizing the church. She must be led by pastors who know why
she exists. She must be led by pastors who know, understand, and are committed to their
God-ordained purpose. In this sense they must be purpose-driven pastors.

However, these pastors must access the right source material if they are to find their
purpose and the purpose of their churches. If the church is to realign herself with truth, her
leaders must access the truth.

The contemporary church is in need of pastors and people who will search the Scriptures,
rather than study people’s felt needs, experiences, and cultural preferences to discover their
purpose.

And this is exactly what we will do in our study of Colossians 1:25-29 today. As we do, we
will see six very important things that the biblically oriented purpose-driven pastor
recognizes and practices. We will also see that the pastor who recognizes and implements
these six things will achieve his purpose of spiritually benefiting his biblical target group—
God’s people.

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Now, why is it so important for you to listen to this message about my job description
as a pastor?

Because you are what you eat! In fact, regardless of how diligently you study your
Bibles—you will be effected either positively or detrimentally by what I feed you each
Sunday.

If I feed you a spiritually light and less filling diet—you will become a “spiritual
lightweight”.
If I feed you paganism—you’ll think and act like a pagan.

And ultimately, you will not be presented as spiritually mature before the Father,
which is what the pastor’s primary purpose is.

The pastor’s purpose is to help those believers he has

been entrusted with to become spiritually mature through
the diligent, comprehensive, systematic, and authoritative
teaching of the Word of God.

1. The purpose-driven pastor recognizes that his ministry is a stewardship

from God. (25a)

 (NASV) “Of this church I was made a minister according to the stewardship
from God bestowed on me for your benefit…”

 (NIV) “I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to
you the word of God in its fullness. . .”

 Paul viewed his ministry as a stewardship from God. Stewardship translates

oikonomia, a compound word made up of oikos (“house”) and nemoô (“manage”).
It means to manage a household as a steward of someone else’s possessions.
Being a steward was thus a position of great trust and responsibility in the ancient
world.
 As his stewardship was from God—Paul was responsible to be faithful to God in
carrying it out (1 Cor. 4:1-2). He had no right to tinker or tweak the message he
was entrusted to preach nor did he have the right to mess with God’s church. His
stewardship was to preach the Word and thus fulfill his ministry (2 Tim. 3:2-5).

2. The purpose-driven pastor recognizes that the primary target group of his
ministry consists of believers and specifically, those believers who have
been entrusted to him. Thus, he to a large degree limits himself to
ministering to those God has entrusted him with. (25b)

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 (NASV) “I was made a minister according to the stewardship from God

bestowed on me for your benefit.”

 (NIV) “I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to
you the word of God in its fullness.”

“The preacher’s job is to feed the sheep not amuse the goats.” J.I. Packer

“Feed My Sheep!” Jesus

 Whereas the vast majority of pastors today are orienting their church’s worship,
teaching, and ministries toward nonbelievers or the unchurched—the stewardship
God has given pastors is to feed, nurture, and care for the sheep He has entrusted
to them.

 Effective ministry requires limits. Jesus’ ministry was effective because He

limited it to doing what God wanted.

First, Jesus limited His ministry to God’s will. He said in John 5:30, “I do not
seek My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.” Too many men in the ministry
are busy building their own empires, rather than seeking to fulfill God’s will.

Second, Jesus limited His ministry to God’s timing. The gospel of John
repeatedly speaks of Jesus’ hour as having not yet come (cf. 2:4; 7:30; 8:20;
12:27; 13:1; 17:1). Jesus carried out His ministry conscious of God’s timing. He
refused to do things until the right time.

Third, Jesus limited His ministry to God’s objective. He, according to Luke
19:10, came to seek and to save the lost.

Fourth, Jesus limited Himself to those God gave Him. In John 17:6 Jesus in
praying to His Father says, “I have manifested your Name to the men whom you
gave Me out of the world; they were yours and you gave them to Me and they
have kept your word.” He realized He could pour His life into only a few men. Out
of the larger group of His followers, He chose the twelve and spent most of His
time with them. And even among the twelve, He spent more time with Peter,
James, and John than with the rest.

Those who desire truly effective ministries must learn the importance of
limits. If we concentrate on the depth of our ministry, God will take care of
the breadth.

3. The purpose-driven pastor recognizes that the subject matter of his

ministry is the Word of God. (25c)

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 (NASV) “I was made a minister according to the stewardship from God

bestowed on me for your benefit, so that I might fully carry out the preaching
of the Word of God.”

 (NIV) “I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to
you the word of God in its fullness I have become its servant by the commission
God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness”

 And whereas you would think that any pastor who uses the Word of God as his
subject matter believes it to be the divinely inspired Word of God—think again.

Rob Bell, pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, an
emergent church stated in the November 2004 issue of Christianity Today
Magazine that what helped he and his wife experience a revitalization of their faith
was “discovering the Bible as a human product” rather than the product of
divine origin. “The Bible is still in the center for us, but it’s a different kind
of center. We want to embrace mystery, rather than conquer it.”

His wife added: “I grew up thinking that we’ve figured out the Bible, that we
knew what it means. Now I have no idea what most of it means. And yet I
feel like life is big again—like life used to be black and white, and now it’s in
color.”

 We must keep PauI’s words in mind in 2 Timothy 4:1-5. Turn there.

God-ordained preaching gives us a God-centered vision of and for life because

this kind of preaching is Bible-saturated.

4. The purpose-driven pastor recognizes that the responsibility of his ministry

is to completely, comprehensively, and authoritatively teach the Word of
God. (25d – 27)

A. To lay out the Word of God completely. (25d)

 The literal Greek rendering of the last part of verse 25 is: “so that I might
completely fill up or fill out the Word of God”

The Greek word that is used here is  and it means to completely fill
something up or out. The idea is that of filling something up or out so as to make
its form visible. One example is that of filling up a glove with your hand or of filling
up a latex glove with air. Once it is filled up and thus out one can see it and
understand it.

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The early church leaders took it to mean that the pastor or Bible teacher was to
“lay out” the Word of God in such a way that God’s people could easily see and
understand it.

B. To disclose God’s revealed truth. (26-27)

The pastor’s job is to unfold the disclosed truth of God’s Word, which before it was
disclosed, was unknown and quite frankly a mystery. When the pastor or Bible
teacher unfolds the whole counsel of God to his people it becomes obvious that of all
the mysteries God has revealed in the New Testament, the most profound is Christ
in us, the hope of glory.

That Christ indwells all believers is the source for their hope of glory and is the
subject or theme of the gospel ministry. What makes the gospel attractive is not just
that it promises joy, heaven and help, but that it promises a person with us forever—
and in fact in us--the person of the GodMan Christ Jesus. And because Christ Jesus
is in us—we have the expectation of glory.

C. To preach plainly about Christ. (28a)

The Greek word for “proclaim” is It means to declare plainly, openly,
or aloud. In this verse it is in the emphatic position thus it could be rendered: We
proclaim Him and Him alone.

 This would not fit well with the Emergent Church’s practice of rejecting
the exclusivist claims that Christ is the only way to Heaven.

 According to an article written in the Winston-Salem Journal by well-

known evangelist Tony Campolo, “They [members of the emergent
church] are not about to damn the likes of Gandhi or the Dali Lama to
hell simply because they have not embraced Christianity.”

People can only accept of Christ what they know of Him.

People can only know Christ to the degree that they know
His revealed Word—the Scriptures.

5. The purpose-driven pastor recognizes that the goal or primary purpose of

his ministry is the spiritual maturity of those believers he has been given
charge over. (28-29a)

 (NASV) “We proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with
all wisdom, so that we may present every man complete in Christ.”

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 (NIV) “We proclaim him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so
that we may present everyone perfect in Christ.”

A. He accomplishes this by using the Scriptures to correct, warn, admonish,

and encourage those he has been entrusted with.

B. He accomplishes this by using the Scriptures to shape the will of those he

has been entrusted with as he systematically and consistently teaches
them God’s perspective in all things [wisdom].
C. He accomplishes this by proclaiming Christ.

The Scottish preacher, James Stewart, said “the aims of all genuine preaching are
to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth
of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the
love of God, to devote the will to the purpose of God.”

Now if my preaching would do all that, and that is my goal, you will become
spiritually mature.

Beware of preachers who make you feel comfortable about your

spiritual condition and eternal destination without a biblical basis.

6. The purpose-driven pastor recognizes that he must work hard depending

upon God to provide the energy and wherewithal if he is to accomplish his
purpose of presenting all his people before God as mature in Christ. (29)

 (NIV)To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in
me.

 Labor = to work to the point of utter exhaustion]

 The work of maturing believers is a work of God in which He uses godly pastors as
one of the primary means. This is why it is so important that we be under pastors
who know and understand their purpose as well as pastors who love us enough to
teach us the truth.

 Is it possible to enter heaven as a spiritual “underachiever”, as one who never

reached spiritual maturity? Note that in verse 22, Jesus will eventually present
before the throne as holy, blameless, and beyond reproach all he has reconciled to
the Father. This is our ultimate spiritual destiny.

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However, this does not necessarily mean we will all be spiritually mature. Oh we will
be in glorified bodies and unable to even think a sinful thought but our levels of
spiritual maturity may very well differ. For how can the believer who has never
progressed past the milk of the word be as mature as the one who is digesting and
applying the meat of the word?

Thus, the motivation to grow in God’s Word and to place yourself under biblical
preaching is the attaining of greater spiritual maturity in Christ.

 And my motivation in preaching the word is that we all reach spiritual maturity
in Christ. May I also say that it is to ensure as much as is possible that none
of us in this room fail to arrive in glory. As the Puritan preacher, John Donne
said:

“What Sea could furnish my eyes with tears enough to pour out, if I should think, of all this
congregation, which looks me in the face now, I should not meet one at the Resurrection.”

The pastor’s purpose is not to build a great church as much as it is to build great Christians.
The irony is this—that in building great Christians He will build a great church!

CONCLUSION

As we finish I want to warn you all that while this passage is primarily directed to those who
are responsible to lead and feed the flock of God’s church—the principles derived from it
can be applied to parents teaching their children, Sunday School teachers teaching their
students, Youth Group leaders teaching our teens, Bible study leaders, Small group leaders,
future elders to be, and anybody who is sharing the Bible with anyone.

So, no matter who you are please remember in your teaching that:

1. Your ministry has been given to you as a stewardship from God and as such He will
hold you accountable for the quality of your work and effort.
2. Your primary target group in ministry are those God has already entrusted to your
care. Feed the sheep you have and perhaps God will give you more.
3. The subject matter that needs to be taught is God’s Word. Don’t fall into the trap of
talking about everything else but.
4. Teach the Bible to those you are responsible for as thoroughly, comprehensively,
completely, and accurately as you can.
5. Remember that the goal of your teaching is your student’s spiritual maturity. Thus,
don’t entertain them or amuse them—teach them.

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6. And finally, always keep in mind that whereas God will provide the power to fulfill
your ministry—you must still provide the labor. Don’t get lazy in teaching God’s
Word.

And lest you think you have nothing to offer anybody in the way of teaching the Bible and
ministering to others—let me tell you the story about a blind and uneducated African woman
who upon coming to Christ at age seventy decided she needed to teach somebody what
she had learned about God.

She went to the missionary who had led her to the Lord and asked her to underline John
3:16 in red in her Bible. Then she took her Bible and sat in front of a Boy’s School in the
afternoon.

When the school dismissed for the day and the boys were running out the front door she
would call one or two of them and ask them if they knew French.

When they proudly responded that they did, she would ask them to please read the passage
underlined in red. When they did, she would ask them, “Do you know what this means?”

And when they said “No”, she would teach them what the verse meant and proclaim Christ
to them.

The missionary that led her to the Lord reports that as a result of this seventy-year-old blind
and uneducated woman’s teaching ministry, twenty-four of those boys are now pastors.

So, with that in mind what’s your excuse?

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