Are Reformed People Too Hard on Topical Preaching?

The Problem With Bad Topical Preaching

All right, Tim, so the question for today is, are Reformed people too hard on topical preaching?

In some sense, I think the answer is yes, and then in other senses, I think the answer is probably no.

Okay, so probably the vaguest answer possible.

Yeah, I mean, I want to say yes, I want to say no, okay? So no, we'll start with a no. I mean, I think in a lot of ways, most of the topical preaching that most people are gonna do is just bad. It's just, it's worse than bad.

It's like the kind of stuff that you wouldn't want your dog to listen to, kind of bad. So, and that's just true. I mean, most of the time when you have, particularly when you have pastors who most of what they do is topical preaching, what's gonna happen is that most, they have some kind of topic in their mind.

In best case scenario, they have a topic that they came to independently that they want to talk about. Worst case scenario is some kind of charismatic experience has led to some sort of sermon. And then once they have their message, then they go to the text and they basically find their passage that already confirms what they believe.

So it's like an eisegetical exercise at that point. And a lot of times, if it's just on a practical topic, it's gonna be mostly just them trying to pigeonhole the Bible into some kind of psychological or sociological observation at that point.

So reform people being hard on topical preaching if the only experience they have with topical preaching is that kind of thing, I totally get it, right? And that's most of what's happening, particularly in your big churches is you have a bunch of topical stuff and it's just bad.

So yeah, yes and amen, most of it's bad.

Exposition as a Corrective to Eisegesis

Yeah, you know, I remember I saw someone point out or ask this question online, I think this week actually, someone was, someone, maybe you saw this too, but someone asked, you know, are there any, do you know of any false teachers that preach exegetically?

And I couldn't think of a single, maybe there's someone out there, but I couldn't think of a single person. Everyone I've ever heard is like the, you know, I'm gonna pull from, you know, three to five different random verses and, you know, do the most sort of like theological like backflips I can to try and make them mean exactly what I want them to mean, right?

Yeah, so, and that's where, that's the value of exposition at that point is it forces a preacher to deal with what's actually in the text. And it can be a very helpful and corrective thing if it's done well to actually walk through the text.

And, you know, a lot of the bad like theologies that are out there are the kind of theologies that could be corrected by a preacher committing himself to careful verse by verse exposition week in and week out.

And so I'm in favor of it. And most of what, you know, the teaching I've done has always been exposition. And I like it and I lean that direction. But then at the same time, I think that there is a very important place for topical preaching to be found also.

What Topical Preaching Is Meant to Do

And I think Reformed people, they may be, they're too hard on the concept of topical preaching in general because it's so abused. So I do have a corrective I wish could happen in most churches as it relates to this.

I would say, yes, I think there, on the one hand, it's impossible to be too hard on what's actually being done under the name of topical preaching, right? Like it's impossible to be too hard on that. But then like the idea itself is not a bad idea when done well.

And I would say that Careful, Tim, you might alienate our base audience. That's fine.

Well, we'll get them at one point or another, right? They can't listen to us for long. They have to have thick enough skin to get it one way or the other. But no, I think what topical preaching is designed to do is it's designed to answer the question, what does the whole Bible say on a particular topic?

And if you're the kind of individual who has a very thorough, comprehensive, not exhaustive knowledge of the scripture, but a comprehensive knowledge of the scripture, you could do topical very well. And doing topical very well is very helpful.

Like it's a very helpful thing that I wish more preachers do, but then it is very hard. If you're gonna answer the question, what does the whole Bible say about marriage? What does the whole Bible say about sex?

What does the whole Bible say about parenting? What does the whole Bible say about voting? Churches, they need to answer these questions that people have that are very practical in orientation. And the problem is that it just takes a lot more work.

Exegetical preaching is easy. Like it really is. Like it's a lot easier than doing topical well. I mean, it's easy to do topical poorly, right? Exposition is a lot harder than doing it poorly, but doing it well means that you're gonna have to like read the whole book multiple times cover to cover and requires you to have a pretty, not an exhaustive understanding of the scripture, but a pretty comprehensive understanding of the scripture to be able to answer those questions.

And I think that it does have a very important place in the life of the pulpit to where, you think about as you go through, like I don't wanna wait 10 years to talk about marriage. Right, yeah. From the pulpit, right?

Because I finally get to Ephesians 5 or Colossians or whatever, I don't wanna wait 10 years to do that. I think that,.

There's a lot of people that come and go in between 10 years. It might be that you wanna Just teach through the book of Song of Solomon, man. Verse by verse.

Yeah, verse by verse. I mean, the thing is most people who are doing exposition, they're only doing it in the New Testament anyways, right? So there's that too. But I mean, I do think having periodically taking a break from the normal exposition that you do as your steady dyke that keeps you honest and just addressing certain topics, like what does the Bible say about voting?

I mean, I wish that there were churches that went there with it. Like, what does the Bible say about voting? Let's do a short topical series on this and try to cover the main points here. You don't have to cover everything, but let's cover the main points and inform people.

And I think that could be a very helpful thing. Now, I think a lot of churches, they have arbitrarily decided they're gonna do that in small groups and they're not gonna do that in the Sunday morning service.

And I would just think, why not? Why not have a month series on voting? And particularly if you're recording it, you can have it there for posterity and refer people back to it. I think that could be a good thing.

That could be a netifying thing, a helpful thing. Same thing for marriage. Same thing for parenting. I mean, I don't think you have to wait 20 years to talk about it one time. And part of the problem with doing it from an exposition sense is that you get to that passage in Ephesians, children obey your parents and the Lord for this is right.

Fathers do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in a discipline and instruction of the Lord. It's like, that's not everything the Bible has to say about parenting. And maybe at some point during your...

And you have two options at that point. You get to that passage and then you're gonna do a topical message in disguise, right? To where you're gonna brought it in and out. And I would just say, no, I mean, just do a series on parenting.

Talk about the major features of parenting in the Bible. And it might be something that you add that can scratch certain itches and answer certain questions that your church is gonna have. And there are some regular, normal, main things that you should address as a pastor.

And I wish we could just, I think the broader point is I wish we could just do it well, put it in there in between the regular exposition, show all the charlatans and the frauds how to do it, how to really do it.

But I think we can do it better than them. I don't think we have to surrender that territory. I think we should do it better than them. And yeah, keep on doing the exposition that keeps you honest, that keeps you focused, but then also do the topical stuff too.

Using Systematic Theology and Midweek Teaching Well

And that's what systematic theology essentially is, is just doing something very similar to that. It's organizing Bible by means of topics. And I think it would be a nice part of what we're doing if we could make a bigger effort.

To include that in what we're doing. Is there anything beneficial from saying like, I know sort of your solution to it is say, hey, do probably mostly exegetical preaching and then periodically insert periods of time, several weeks at a time where you have some, like a topical sort of series that you're going through.

Is there any benefit from doing some sort of like, probably 95 of the time on a Sunday, I'm gonna preach exegetically, but then I'm trying to purposely supplement like on Wednesday nights or something, a lot more topical type things that don't necessarily have much to do with what's taught on Sunday, but are trying to more teach like the whole counsel of the Bible.

Yeah, I mean, I think if you, I would say that if you're devoted predominantly in the Sunday morning to do exposition, then you really do need to make sure that you're doing topical in the midweek kind of stuff or the Sunday night kind of stuff as a necessity.

Do you think that that's like a good way to do it or that's just like, if you are doing it that way and that's really what you wanna do?

Well, I don't know, there's no rules to this, and I think some of the, I think the reform crowd has arbitrarily decided that exposition is the only way to do it. And I would just say that, oh, I think you wanna teach the whole counsel of God and that's one faithful way to do it.

And I think, I do think you need to get around to actually being helpful. So sometimes like, you can do exposition poorly too, just like you can do topical really poorly, you can do exposition really poorly.

And I think exposition is a safeguard, but then sometimes like you can provoke a lot of questions in the normal exposition that you're not gonna answer if you're gonna be faithful to the intent of the passage.

And I think you need to have some way of answering those kinds of questions. So like, you open up a can of worms with the submission stuff and the role stuff, and there's a lot more to marriage than that.

And if that's the only time you ever really talk about marriage, then you need to, I'm not saying that, like there's a lot of passages that talk about marriage, here and there, but it might be nice just to get a whole picture of what it looks like in one sitting to get your mind around the whole, instead of just like gazing at a part here and a part there and a part there.

And so like put it all together and help us see the whole thing. And I think there has to be some place for that. So, yeah, I mean, if you say, hey, Sunday's always gonna be exposition, Wednesdays we'll do the topical stuff, that's fine, whatever.

But I just think my opinion, my opinion, non-sanctified opinion is that it might be nice when most of your people are there, right? Most of the people who are there on Sunday morning to put a little topical in there.

And I wouldn't say 95 of the time because that means you do one topical sermon every two years, right? But I would say, I mean, I would advise make most of it exposition, but you do have to, I would say it would be helpful, I think.

A Better Balance Between Exposition and Topical Series

What I'm getting out of this is we need to do a series on Song of Solomon to counter balance the submissions.

Well, I think, yeah, just related to the topic of preaching in general, I think we could do a better job of getting a lot more Old Testament in there too, right? Not be functionally Marcionites in how we're preaching, get some of the Old Testament stuff in there, it's written for our instruction too, so yeah.

I'm taking this as a personal sign from God that we need to do the, I'm just kidding. No, okay, no, I think that makes sense. Yeah, probably do mostly exegetical preaching, but then we probably do need to do a better job with having some topical things because there is a benefit in terms of trying to teach more of the whole counsel of God and we get to stick it to all the false teachers by teaching topically the right way.

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