WWUTT 1620 Q&A Sunday School Lessons, Expository Preaching, and Understanding the Text

How can you prepare a good Sunday school lesson? Should preaching in the church be topical or expository?

And how do we understand the main meaning of a text? The answers to these questions and others when we understand the text.

This is When We Understand the Text, a daily Bible study in the word of Christ, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.

Visit our website at www .wtt .com. Here once again is Pastor Gabe. Thank you,

Becky. You're welcome. So let's start here in Ephesians chapter four, verses 29 to 32, because I gave this passage to somebody today, so it was on my mind.

All right. Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for building up what is needed so that it will give grace to those who hear.

And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and anger and wrath and shouting and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.

Instead, be kind to one another, tenderhearted, graciously forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has graciously forgiven you.

That's awesome. Thanks for joining us today. Bye -bye. That's it. There you go. That's the message.

There's your Bible lesson for today. And it pretty much sums it up. A good reminder for every day. Oh, yeah.

That we keep control of our tongues. Even the things that we write or type.

Or think. Yeah, thinking even. Having a mind that is submitted to Christ. Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.

As Jesus said, when we are called to worship God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, your mouth and the fingers that you use to text the things you text or post on social media, all of that is attached.

Yeah, or write emails. Writing emails. Who does that? That's old school. Yeah, right. You just sent a video chat to somebody now.

Who's even writing email anymore. I still prefer writing email. I still prefer letters and cards.

I wanna have - Things that you can hold in your hand. Yeah, well, that's good too. I also, I just want one place where I can go and get my messages.

I hate having five social media accounts and I have to check all of them. That's why I have so many emails.

I gave up on that. Well, you need to have one email address. Well, I have one email address, but that's multiple things to check.

So, I've given up. Well, your email inbox has 50 ,000 emails in it.

No, it has more. Yeah, I was gonna say, that's probably low -balling. That's low.

But anyway, back to the point. Anyway, yes. Yeah, that's right. We poor people have a heart attack. That as we share and communicate with one another, even in the words that we're saying to each other, may they be honoring to God.

Yes. And speaking of email and all of that. Yes. On Friday, we respond to emails from the listeners and you can send those emails to one place.

One email address. What is it? When we understand the text at gmail .com.

Now, we've got a contest going on right now. We're giving away an R .C. Sproul book. Ooh, which one?

Well, it's a couple of them. Oh, even better. Holiness of God and what's that other one up there?

Saved from what? That's what it was. So, either, no, not Holiness of God, Chosen by God. Oh, I was gonna say.

It's either gonna be Chosen by God or Saved from what? You can specify in your email which one you want.

If we read your email next week, it's next week's podcast, which today is the 11th, so we're talking the 18th.

On next week's podcast, if we read your question, you win the R .C. Sproul book. You'll get it from us in the mail.

I'm clearing off some duplicates off my shelf. And I had several copies of those two books.

So, either one, you'll receive if we read your question next week. Now, be sure to include your name and address.

I'm getting enough emails now that I'm not gonna hunt you down. And I've already received a couple from somebody going, I'm entering the contest, but they don't have a name and address attached.

Oh, that hurts. You have to remember your name and your mailing address, because if we read your question, then

I'm just gonna throw it in a package and drop it in the mail. And it's something that you can hold in your hand.

That's right. See, we're back to the hold in your hand and the email. Not digital communication.

You've got the words of R .C. Sproul right there on a book in front of you. Yeah. That's awesome. So, whatever question you wanna ask, anything theological at all, as we respond to your

Bible questions, it could be about something you've heard on the podcast. It could be about something that has been in a

Sunday school lesson that you heard over the weekend or whatever else. Just a general Bible question that you have.

Send it to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com, include your name and address. And we'll do our best to answer it.

That's correct. We'll do our best. Your response to the question might be, I don't know.

Yep, it might. But I read it. I read the question on the air, so you still get the book. Even if I didn't know the answer to your question.

So, all of the questions that I'm reading today, all of these, I think, were sent prior to the contest.

They didn't have any names and address or not a mailing address attached to it in a way. So, these questions have been sent in by our listeners.

And this first one comes from Susanna in New York. Do you recognize that name? I do. Yep, so she says,

Pastor Gabe and Becky. Ah! I think that's how you say that.

I don't know. I don't know. Well, she says, she puts in parentheses, that's an excited ah.

Oh, okay. So, ah! Yeah, or okay, sure. That sounded less guttural than mine did,

I think. It did, yes, yes. So, she said, you have absolutely made my year and it's still only

February. When I wrote my email about where a Christian could turn for trustworthy news sources,

I was not sure I would even get a response. But not only did you answer my question on the

Q &A, it was the basis for an interview with Brian and Megan Basham. Yeah.

Whom I just discovered and love. Oh, good. I felt like I was in the same hangout with you all.

Actually, a Zoom call. It was. It was a Zoom. I was hanging out. Yeah. They were hanging out a few states away.

I don't think I've ever done hangouts before. Is that Google? Is it Google Hangouts? I think so. I'm not advertising for those companies.

Google Duo, I don't know about. They're not paying us to push their stuff. Don't even look it up.

Why are you looking it up? I'm curious now. I'll put it away. So, she says,

I've already listened to the interview twice. Aw. And I'm sharing it with everyone in my family. Thank you so much.

That's awesome. Good deal. It was great to visit with Brian and Megan. Oh, it was so great.

Really neat to get to know them. Now, the funny thing about that was what you heard last week was 45 minutes of chatting.

Becky already can't contain herself. Sorry. There was an additional 58 minutes of chatter in the whole recording.

An additional, that was not. That's right. Part of. That was all the talk we were doing before and after.

Even when we were chatting like 20 or 30 minutes beforehand, I was going, guys, we could be putting this on, the program, let's get it together.

No, then we chatted for another five or 10 minutes. We did, yes. So, great couple.

One of those that was like, you know, wish we lived closer, we'd go out and do something together. Totally. Something like that, yeah.

It would be awesome. But great to hear about what it is that they're doing in their respective journalistic corners.

Yeah. And then the good thoughts. And it's also a good encouragement to Christians that we can go out into different fields and like media, for instance, and still be true to our commitment to God.

Our convictions. Yes. Yeah, even. And our convictions, yes. Right. We need more of that.

We do. I mean, we need more Christians in those areas. Yes, definitely. So, anyway, all of that was really good.

If you missed any of that, go and listen to last week's Q &A. It was awesome. It was our pleasure, Susanna. Thank you for your question.

Yes, thank you for the excuse. That's right. Because even when we put something like that together,

I mean, I'm not the best with coming up with questions. Like, what do you want to talk about? All the random chatter that we did before and after, that's usually what we do.

Yes. It doesn't typically have a direction. Yeah, you know, we just like to chat.

Yeah. That's it. So, yeah, if somebody else sends an email sometime and I go, you know, I know somebody who might be able to answer that, we'll throw another interview together.

That'd be awesome. You never know. I've been wanting to get Justin Peters on. Oh, that'd be so cool.

And I already know what I want to talk about. So, what is the evidence that we look for for genuine repentance?

Because it was a couple of years ago. Oh, yeah, it was back in 2019 when Kanye West came up with his

Jesus album, Jesus is King. And everybody was going, oh, Kanye West is a

Christian now. He's clearly not. He's in an open relationship with another woman, which means, you know, they can just kind of be out with other people and -

No, that's not okay. Nothing of his lifestyle looks like a

Christian. And yet when Justin said three years ago, back in 2019, when he said, we need to be careful about this because there is no evidence in his life that he's a believer.

Man, the response to him was just so angry. They were, they were livid.

And yet Justin was right. He was right about Todd White, who was not really repentant when he said he was.

Justin was right about Benny Hinn, who claimed to repent and he had not really repented.

So, I think it would be a good conversation. Definitely. How do we know, how do we identify? He has that good discernment.

That's right, he does. How do we identify if somebody is truly repentant? What should we be looking for?

I'll set that up with Justin. We'll see if we can - That'd be so cool. Get him on the program. Yeah. This next question comes from Richard in Indiana.

Dear Pastor Gabe, I have been enjoying your Sunday school lessons through the book of Ruth. I am a

Sunday school teacher myself. I teach an adult class in my church. I heard you say that most of the classes are doing the same thing.

So yeah, the classes here at First Baptist Lyndale are, we're teaching the same book, going through the same book. We don't do it that way,

Richard says, and it's incumbent upon me to pick my own series and write out my own lessons every single week.

My question is, how do you prepare your Sunday school lessons? Is it any different than the way that you prepare your sermons?

That's a good question. So yeah, it is different than the way that I prepare my sermons. Definitely. So there are some sermons where I'll go into the pulpit with no notes, except for the quotes or cross -references that I'm using.

But when I do my Sunday school lessons, they're completely written out. And then I ignore what

I wrote when I teach the lesson. If I follow what

I wrote, I'll get lost. That's part of the problem. And Sunday school is a lot more interactive. So it's not like when

I'm preaching a sermon, I can stay on thought and just follow the text, follow the flow of the sermon and not get off.

But with Sunday school, because I'm being more interactive and people are kind of responding with questions or comments and they can interrupt me at any time with a question, then that's gonna interrupt my flow of thought.

And I will get lost in the manuscript, in the lesson that I've written out if that's what I'm following.

So I don't follow the script when I'm teaching, but I know exactly what

I'm teaching because I've already written the whole thing out. So it's not like, yeah, I'm gonna write all of this and then I'm gonna ignore it and teach my own thing.

It's not like I'm going with that. And usually when you, I've noticed that when you prepare some stuff for either or, for both sermon and Bible study, that you prepare way too much and you have to dwindle it down.

Yeah, it's over -prepared. Multiple times. And so you have a good feel for and knowledge of, even if it does go on a rabbit trail down a different direction than what you were intending, you still, like you were planning on covering six verses, but you only covered three because of the deep thought that went into that.

And everybody was reactive to that. Yeah, because I was over -prepared. Right. Right. Now, when -

But it's, I mean, like you're more able to flow with the, I don't wanna say audience, but the people in the

Bible study. Right. Versus up on a sermon, you know, in a sermon when you're up on stage, you don't -

I probably try to tune everybody out when I'm preaching. Yeah. So, like I'm not even really reading the crowd.

Right. You've heard that expression, read the room. I'm not even doing that. I'm up there preaching to honor the

Lord. There's a different approach to preaching the sermon than when I do the Sunday school lesson.

Plus with the sermon, I've run through the whole thing Saturday night. So I went through all of it the night before, but then even on Sunday morning, as I'm continuing to reflect upon those things, yeah, there may be something else that comes to mind that ends up stretching it out a little bit more.

Like Becky said, I always go into the pulpit over -prepared, but I feel like I'm under -prepared.

That's part of the reason why. So it's kind of like I'm up there to preach an hour and a half sermon, and I come away with 45 minutes, then

I did pretty good, you know? I don't manuscript out my sermons, kind of for the same reason, is

I'm afraid I'm gonna get lost. It tends to get me off if I feel like I have to read. And even the genuineness of my delivery,

I feel like gets lost. It does. You have a different tone when you're reading versus when you're talking.

But I'm also not going into the pulpit blind. Like I've not done anything. I've not prepared anything, which is why

I run through it the night before. Now with the Sunday school lesson, I have taught through it before I teach my

Sunday school class. We get together with our teachers on Wednesday night, and we go through the entire lesson.

We spend an hour together going through the whole lesson. Exactly what I've written out, taking questions, comments, other elders chime in.

We've got at least three elders, three other elders apart from me in that room when we go through the

Sunday school lessons. So this has brought our Sunday school classes at First Baptist Lyndale under elder leadership, and not just mine, but even other elders that serve at the church.

I think it's awesome. Yeah, it's wonderful. Yeah, and even though Tom is not part of those classes, Tom Buck, because he's got another class that he teaches on Wednesday night, but he sees the lesson.

So this really is an eldership effort. We've put all of this together, guided our teachers, so that all of the teaching and all of the classes basically have had eldership approval, if that makes sense.

So with the Sunday school lesson, yeah, it's a little bit different. And the way that I'll present it to the class, if you've been listening to the

Ruth study when it gets published on Sunday, you'll hear me kind of, I'll read through the text, I'll give you an outline, which is a little different than the way that I do it in a sermon.

I don't often do that in the sermon. I don't give it out. Sometimes I'll say, like, you can see how the text divides, and that's how we're gonna approach this today.

Right. Our first point is, you know, these couple of verses, the next one's gonna be these three. Now, when

I do that in the Sunday school class, though, I'll bring the class into here's our central proposition, meaning here's the point of this text that we're looking at.

So I lay that out at the very beginning, and then everything that we look at points back to the main purpose of the text that we're looking at, this passage today.

So we'll be talking about that even as we go through it, and then when we get to the end, summarizing all that again. So now do you see how this text points to this?

So how do you get to that point that you know that the text is that? Like, isn't he asking your approach to?

How do you prepare your Sunday school lessons? Right. Now, okay, so you're asking, like, how do you know that that's the central proposition of the text?

Because I get lost a lot. Hold on to that thought, because we actually got another question coming up here.

There we go. That I think that one will go better with than the preparing the Sunday school lesson. So when

I go into, well, not go into the pulpit, but come to the stand with the lesson that I have prepared,

I'll follow my outline, but I'm not following the manuscript that I wrote. The other thing with regard to the manuscript of the

Sunday school lesson is I have questions that are written in there for other people in other

Sunday school classes to ask and answer. And so different classes may expect different things.

Like there's some classes, they want a handout. They don't just want to sit there and listen to a lecture, but there are other classes that they don't want anything.

We don't want to ask questions. We don't want to write anything down. We're just here to learn. We'll be interactive, you know, whatever, but they don't have any extra, don't want any extra materials.

So they don't get the handout, but those classes that do, I've got blanks in there. So as they're going through the lesson, they can fill that out.

There's a margin on the side if they want to keep some extra notes and things like that. So I've written that out. I've tried to cater the lesson to different classes needs.

And that's another reason why I can't follow my own manuscript because it's completely different than the way I teach.

I'm trying to cater the manuscript to all the teachers rather than just me. Just you. Yeah. But at least

I've written it out. We've talked it out before I ever even come to teach it on a

Sunday morning. And then this past lesson, if you were listening to the Ruth study this past Sunday, you'll notice that I didn't even get to the end of it.

So I had the text broken up into three sections. We got through the first two. And now this coming

Sunday, I'm going to have to finish that third one, which is really short. It's just resolution to that part of the story.

But nonetheless, I went down to the last minute. I had no extra time. Ran out of time.

Yeah. And it was because we were talking about some other things, things that were not in the recording. You know, we take prayer requests and things like that at the start of class.

So all of that at the beginning of class kind of ate up time and I didn't have enough time at the conclusion there. But that's kind of another example of, you know, coming into the teaching over prepared and then just not being able to get everything into the lesson like I needed to.

That's another reason why I want to make the central proposition known at the start of the lesson.

Like the main point of the text, I want to make that known at the start. And not save it for the end. Yeah, say we start discussing something about the text and we get hung up on that idea.

Yes. And everybody's asking questions. That's where my brain goes all the time. And I've even prepared some, you know.

Like prepared some, not Sunday school, but like women's studies and stuff like that, you know, going through a book of the

Bible or whatever. And I still, I have to go to you constantly because I'm like, I don't get it.

I don't get it, right. Like help me put into words what I'm thinking. Right. Like I know what I'm trying to say, but I can't get there.

So when we start talking about those kinds of things and we'll rabbit trail, you know. Oh yeah. Or a certain concept in the text.

Maybe I didn't even think that this was gonna be a discussion point. And then it does, you know. It becomes something that the class is asking questions about then we don't get to the end.

And I haven't resolved the lesson. I haven't gotten to the point yet guys, you know. So that's why you make the point known in the beginning and then you keep bringing it up as you go.

So you see how this is the theme. You see how this keeps coming up, you know, things like that. That's what you're doing as you go through the lesson so that you're not left at the end trying to scramble and bring everything together when you don't have enough time, you know.

So yeah, the preparation for a Sunday school lesson is gonna be a little bit different than the preparation for a sermon.

That was it. Okay. I don't have any more. Any other questions or comments about that? That's the way in my classes.

Yeah, every time. Any questions or comments? So let's go on to our next question then.

So now I'm skipping down, but this ties into the question that you asked. How do you find that central proposition?

How do you get there? Okay, now we're gonna move from Sunday school class lesson to expository preaching.

Okay. All right. So Jason from Illinois, that was Richard from Indiana. We're jumping over a state to Jason from Illinois.

He says, could you please shed some light on the importance of expository style preaching?

Possibly share the differences between topical expository and whatever other styles are out there.

Should your church sermons be all expository style or should there be a balance of both styles?

Thank you for your ministry. My response to that question is every single sermon should be expository.

Definitely. There should not be topical sermons. Now, having said that, somebody's going, what? What if we want to address marriage this

Sunday? Well, then you address marriage, but you be sure that whatever text is being preached is being preached with expository disciplines because otherwise you're ripping that text out of context and trying to fit it into a framework that you've already preconceived instead of treating the text for what the original author was saying to the original audience.

Even if you're making a cross -reference, you need - So, hold on a second. Okay. Let's back up a little bit and explain what expository means just in case people don't know.

So expository means just what the word sounds like. It means to expose what's in the text.

So your main discipline when you preach expository is to understand what the original author was saying to the original audience.

Okay. That's first. Okay. That's the first thing you're asking in your mind. Who is this by?

Who's writing? Who's reading this? So you follow what we refer to as travel instructions.

Okay. Just like you've got a roadmap and you're going to follow the map. You're not jumping straight to New York. You got to plot your way to New York, right?

Sure. So it's same with when you're writing a text. Well, I guess Susanna, who we read from earlier, she doesn't have to plot her way to New York.

She's in New York. Anyway. Okay. So you have to just the same with any lesson that you prepare.

And this goes for Sunday school or this goes for sermon. You need to know how you're going to get there.

So you're plotting out, understanding the main point of the text, plotting out how you're going to get there.

Even when it comes to pointing to Christ and the cross and then how you find modern application. You don't jump straight to modern application because then you've just taken the sermon and you've made it moralism.

And how do you know that you are even drawing the point out of that text that the original writer intended or that the

Holy Spirit himself intends? Right. If you're reading stories about David and Goliath and you're like, all your problems are

Goliath and you're David, then you've completely missed the point of the text.

Right. Let's skip that. That's not the meaning of that story. So the first thing is understanding, exposing the meaning of the text.

Right. Another word we use for that is exegesis, which means to draw out the original meaning.

Now the contrast to that is eisegesis, which means to impose upon the text what you want it to say.

So we're not trying - Yeah, and that happens so much. A lot. That's a great majority of teaching. So we're not trying to understand what the text is saying.

We're just trying to find a verse that fits with what we want it to go with. So one of the most recent videos that I did, what videos, was the

Purpose Driven Life. Yes. It's been 20 years now since the Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren came out back in 2002.

Oh my goodness. And one of the things that he does throughout that book is eisegesis.

So he's got a point and then he goes and just finds, he goes to find a verse that fits his point and he looks through multiple translations.

So he finds the wording of that verse even that fits the point that he's making. Man. And I cannot even remember an article that I've read from Rick Warren where he was not eisegetic.

Everything I've ever read from Rick Warren, whether it's in that book, in another book, Purpose Driven Church is another book of his that I've read, or any of his articles that he writes it.

I think it's pastors .com is his website. Any of those articles, they're all eisegetical. He's always constantly taking verses out of context to fit his point.

Me, me, me. Yeah, me, me, me, I, I, I, or you, you, you, just making it about you and it's infuriating.

I mean, to see somebody treat the text that way. Sure, right. Because he's talking about you. I can make the

Bible into a fortune cookie. Yes. You just pick all these verses out and. And that's the hard part is whenever you're teaching children specifically, you have to make sure that their minds are wrapped around that God is not a genie.

He's not a fortune cookie. It's not the same. There's a big difference. Your wish is my command.

Right. And your prayers should not reflect that. So that's, I mean, that's hard, but that's where a lot of Rick Warren -like people tend to go to.

Yeah. So we've been talking about Sunday school and sermons, but even when it comes to children's lessons, or even when it comes to the

Bible study you're hosting in your home, whatever it might happen to be. In all of these things, you have to practice the same disciplines.

Yes. Drawing out the meaning of the text, not imposing upon it what you want it to mean. Right. We all have to be disciplined in this way, in the way that we handle the

Bible. So that's the first thing regarding expository preaching. Now we've got expository workshops.

Yes. That we do through G3. The next one is coming up just in the days, the couple of days prior to the

Shepherd's Conference in California. So ShepCon, let's see, I leave to go to ShepCon Sunday, March 6th.

So I think the workshop is, is it Tuesday and Wednesday? I don't know. See, now I'm just talking off the top of my head and I'm gonna get it wrong.

I think so. Oh, it's in this book I'm holding. Hang on, let me see. Oh, hey. Yeah, I bet you it's right here.

January, nope, that's not it. It is, January was in Arkansas. March 7th and 8th.

So there you go. Yeah, I get there, I get to California on Sunday. Oh. Sunday evening. And then. Monday? Right, our first day is

Monday. So March 7th and 8th, Santa Clarita Baptist Church, which is the pre

Shepherd's Conference pastors workshop. There you go. Okay, so this is all, it's

G3 that puts this together. This is right ahead of the Shepherd's Conference. So it's kind of like we're getting pastors that are coming in for ShepCon and then they're just coming in a little bit earlier so they can attend this expository workshop.

Yeah. And then we pour into these pastors over a couple of days, these disciplines to use when it comes to sermon preparation.

And a lot of these guys will say they have never known this before. Oh yeah, I bet.

Yeah, they went through seminary, probably even went through six years of seminary, got their doctorates and nobody ever taught them about expository preaching.

And I hear this, I've heard this for years, not just when I got involved in these expository workshops, but I've heard for years pastors say to me,

I went and got all this theology knowledge, I learned the languages, Hebrew and Greek, nobody ever really taught me how to preach a sermon.

Yeah. Well, I mean, everybody has their own approach. Is it difficult?

I mean, like to teach someone else how to do that? Once you learn these disciplines, you're actually gonna find it much, much easier to do your sermon preparation than you ever thought.

So when you do it correctly. Yeah, right, exactly. So let me just kind of run through briefly the instructions, the five main courses that we give in these expository workshops.

All right. So number one, we call this first instruction yield to the text.

Okay. Text over framework, the text is king. So when we say text over framework, it means you need to understand the text without imposing upon it, you know.

Not letting it fit in your box. Right, yeah, exactly. Like you're bringing your own preconceived notions to the text or even certain lenses that you might look through.

One thing that you're hearing right now that is very, very common is people taking their cultural experiences and trying to read those things onto the text.

That's a framework. Right. And you're losing the meaning of the text when you're trying to impose that onto what the

Bible says. Definitely. A person who lives in Africa should be able to read the same

Bible that a person does who lives in Europe and still come to the same meaning.

Yeah, definitely. The text only has one meaning. So you yield to the text. It's text over framework.

Now, not all frameworks are bad. You know, the fact that you call yourself reformed or a reformed

Baptist, you know, that's the camp that I'm in. That's not bad. But you still want to be sure that when you're reading the text, you're not trying to make that text fit even into your own reformed framework.

Because how do you know that text even matches up with this reformed doctrine that you're trying to fit it into?

Right. Maybe it's the wrong text for that doctrine. You know what I mean? And you always like put a spin on it or a filter.

You know what I mean? Yeah, something like that. Like filter it through your brain and it comes out differently than what somebody else would read.

So you yield to the text. That's number one. Number two is what we refer to as travel instructions.

Our first instinct is to go directly from the biblical text and apply it to our modern audience.

Sure. Application, that's what you're here for, right? You heard, you came here to hear me tell you, here's what the

Bible says about your circumstance or your situation. Here's what God says that you need to do about that, right? Yes.

But we'll never rightly understand what the text means to us today unless we first understand what it meant to its original audience.

And we must keep in mind too that a text can't ever mean something to us now that it did not mean to them then.

So what it meant to them 2 ,000 years ago in the church to whom this was written has to mean what it means to us now.

Now that doesn't mean that's the application. The application of course is gonna be different.

We live in a different world, a different culture, a different society than they lived in 2 ,000 years ago. So the text may have 10 ,000 applications but there's only one interpretation and you have to get that interpretation correct.

So even going back to Richard's question about preparing a Sunday school lesson, you should not ever preach or teach a book that you have not read all the way through.

You have to read that book of the Bible. No matter what your text is that you're teaching, you need to read that book.

So you know the context of the whole book. You know who the author was, who he was writing to and why.

Now sometimes that's pretty clear. Like for example, you know that Habakkuk for example is talking to God because of the

Chaldeans and the way that they are persecuting God's people, oppressing

God's people and Habakkuk's going, now hang on here, the Chaldeans are way worse than we were. Yeah, we were bad but why are you letting the

Chaldeans get away with this? So you understand why Habakkuk, right from the beginning of the book, you know what

Habakkuk's talking about. The Gospel of John, it says in John 20, I've written these things to you that you may know that Jesus is the

Christ. Right. By faith in his name, you would be saved. So John plainly lays out, here's why

I'm writing this book. And that's been the theme that's carried out. You know, he said that at the beginning of the book as well, just drives the point home when he gets to the end.

Even in 1 John 5, I've written these things to you that you may know that you have eternal life.

So again, sometimes it's plain, sometimes it's clear, here's the meaning of the text, but you have to read the whole text in order to get that.

Yeah. With John, he sticks it at the very end. There you go. So, how could you?

And therefore. How could you have gotten it if you hadn't read through the entire book, right? So that's the other thing.

We have to have our travel instructions. Gotta get that in mind. We're following the flow of the text.

We're not just pulling things out, applying it to places where we want it to apply where it doesn't apply.

Right. So then the next thing you wanna do, instruction number three is you map the structure.

So this is basically coming up with your outline. It's one of the most neglected tasks of expositors, taking the time to rightly consider the structure of the passage.

Now, before I started taking these expository workshops, that was where I was weakest. Yeah. No question.

And when it came to understanding the theme of the text, what's the author talking about? I knew that. I could do that pretty easily.

What's the aim of the text? What is he telling us to do? That was pretty simple to me as well.

Okay. And so then you combine those two things, the aim and the theme, into what we call our central proposition.

That was the term that I used earlier. So the text is about this and the author is telling us to do this.

And you're putting that together and coming up with, this is the main point of this text. Okay. Okay. But what

I was really bad at was structure. I was terrible at outlines. Yeah. I was bad at this in high school and I hated it when my comp teacher made us come up with outlines.

I don't know. I don't know how to come up with an outline. So that's one of the first things that we try to do or one of the main things we try to do with these pastors who come into these workshops too is helping you to identify the structure of the passage.

Where are the breaks? So you're looking for repeated words. You're looking for what's called the top and the tail.

So like, does the passage begin and end the same way? Because if that's it, now that's not going to be the case with every passage, but if it does, then you're probably identifying some structure there.

Yeah. Might be something chiastic, where it kind of builds up to a point and then comes back down. That could be indicated by the beginning and the end of the passage.

Cool. So you're, and then you're looking for like certain keywords that will draw, well, repeated words.

I mentioned that. But there's kind of like a natural break in the text there because of the words that get used.

You know what I mean? So you're just looking for different things in the structure of that text to help you come up with your outline.

And sometimes that's going to require reading it over and over and over again. So for example, since I mentioned

Ruth, the passage this coming Sunday is going to be Ruth four, one through 12. And in order to identify the structure, you just read it over and over and over again.

Now I've read all of Ruth. I know what the whole book is about, but let's focus on this passage and try to ascertain the central meaning of this particular, what we call a pericope.

But that it's that passage of text for that, you know, lesson. That's a fun word. Yeah, pericope, right. Pericope. You've learned a new word today.

The word for the day is pericope. Right. But that's, you know, that passage that we're looking at for that week or for that lesson, it's called a pericope.

So you'll read it over and over again until those things start to pop out at you. And then it's gonna make more sense.

Nate Pickowitz actually applies this discipline also in his book, How to Eat Your Bible. So one of the disciplines that he puts in there is when you're reading a certain sentence that you put an emphasis on the different words as you read it.

Like say, for example, Romans 3 .23, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

So as you're trying to understand that and you're reading it over and over again, put a different emphasis on a different word every time you read it.

Okay. For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And then even that brings out to you for is being said in light of the previous statement.

So, you know, now that's popped into your head because you spent some time on that word. For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

Who are all? Is that every single person? Is there a context to all? The way that's being used there?

Yeah, because sometimes it refers to just Christians and sometimes it refers to everybody. Well, yeah, in the context of that passage, you would recognize that it's referring to the

Jews and Gentiles that Paul had been addressing or had been talking about in the previous two chapters.

For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

Have, how have we sinned? I was thinking past tense. For all have sinned.

And we have an emphasis on sin, understanding what sin is. So yeah, again, I'm not gonna do that whole thing. But as you go through that, and when you're preparing a passage, you've got more text to work with.

So it's gonna be a little bit harder, like Ruth 4, one through 12. Not gonna read that word for word and put a different emphasis on every word.

But I may do that with every verse. So there may be a verse that I put a greater emphasis on than the others.

And that's gonna help to draw out for me what the central proposition is of that text, what the main focus of the text is gonna be.

So we're mapping the structure. You're looking for the outline. You're looking for repeated phrases. You're looking for how this text lays out.

And guys, the Holy Spirit is organized. Very. As we have read in 1

Corinthians 14, which I finished up last week, you have that verse in chapter 14, which says that God is a

God of order, not of disorder. So even when it came to the way the Holy Spirit inspired the writers to write what they wrote, there's structure to it.

There's order to it. These letters are masterfully written. Yes.

And it's not just a guy sitting down with a pen, jotting down everything that flies into his mind.

Duh. There is a structure to all of this.

And you even have the writer's own personality will come out in it in some way.

But all of that still being divinely inspired, every single word being God -breathed.

Amen. It is the word of God. So look for the structure. Have some organization to the text that you're teaching and the lesson you're going to teach.

That's lesson, that was instruction three. Okay, so the next one is then exploring the context.

So you're looking at the context in which this passage sits. What's going on around it?

What's happened beforehand? What's happened afterward? And is that important to the lesson? So there's gonna be times when what you're reading has a historical context.

Sure. There may need to be some added history there that will help you understand the passage better.

There may be a biblical or maybe the context that's most important is the biblical context.

So the biblical context being, for example, the Apostle Paul mentions the sons of Korah.

And so now you've got to go back to reading the story of the sons of Korah to help you understand, right, here's what it is that Paul is referencing and this is why it's so important.

Here's what Paul's audience would have understood by this reference when Paul made it. Right. Or you could even consider only the immediate context.

Like maybe the passage you're looking at, only immediate context is the most important thing. Immediate context is gonna be the verses before and after.

Oh, okay. Like I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Philippians 4 .13. Okay. Right there, the immediate context is gonna be the most important thing that's gonna help us understand what that verse means.

More so than the biblical context or the historical context. In fact, in that case, there's probably no historical context at all.

You don't need to know any history to understand the meaning of that text. Yes. You just look at the context in which it sits and what's in front of or behind it.

Okay. You know what I mean? Sure. And as we're talking about this regarding teaching, hey, this is your own personal

Bible study as well. Yeah, definitely. Like when you sit down and read a text and you wanna understand what it means, these are disciplines that you can apply to your own study.

I remember the first time I went through one of these expository workshops, I was like, I'm going home and I'm teaching everybody this.

My kids are learning it. My Sunday school teachers are learning it. Everybody's gonna learn this. And then the last instruction is crossing the bridge.

You've done all the exegetical work. You've looked at the text. You've come up with the structure. You know the intended meaning.

You've seen the context. You've done all of that work. Now, what do you do with it? Well, now you're gonna preach it.

Ah, yes. So you're crossing the bridge and crossing the bridge will involve a couple of things.

It will involve tying this text into the person and work of Jesus Christ. So as we're looking for Christ in all of the scriptures, how does this text point us to Christ?

If Jesus is in the Old and the New Testament, then no matter what it is that you're reading in the Bible, you should be able to find that somehow this is gonna point us in that direction, that we're looking to Christ in the cross.

Some would argue with me on that. Some would say you don't always have to have a gospel presentation or tie it to the gospel in some way.

But I'm gonna say that's the discipline that you should have. Don't we need the gospel every day? Absolutely.

Reminders, who was it that said that we needed reminders all the time? Joshua chapter one, meditate on it day and night.

There's that one. It was the New Testament though. That it's good for me to remind you. Oh yeah,

John says that in first John. Peter says it in second Peter chapter one. Okay, it might be second

Peter that I was thinking of because we've been through that recently. Paul in Philippians 3 .1. Yes.

Repeating these things to you and it's no trouble for me and it's good for you. We need, we need it.

We have to hear it. Constant reminders of these things, absolutely. And even when you're like, oh yeah,

I know. But no, really, you need to hear it. So absorb it whenever you get to hear it again.

It's awesome. Yeah, right. But like for example, if you're reading a genealogy in the

Old Testament, what's the gospel connotation here to the genealogy? I'm just trying to pick the most extreme example.

There's no gospel there. How do you, you know, so some. But it's important to know where it starts and where it goes.

Yeah, the reason for the genealogies ultimately point us to Christ who fulfills all that genealogy. We see that right at the beginning of the gospel of Matthew.

Yes. So there is a point, but all I'm saying is that some will argue with like, see, there's no clear gospel message here.

So is there really a reason for us to have to make this gospel connection or gospel connotation?

I'm just saying, go ahead and toss it in there because it's good for us to hear it. Yeah, and that's my argument. I'm saying it's a good discipline to have anyway.

Yes, definitely. It's always good to be able to know how you can take this text and see Christ in it.

I think that's good. Within reason, you can even get eisegetical in the way that you're trying to mash

Christ onto a text. True, true. That was probably an irreverent way of putting it, but.

So crossing the bridge is helping us to see drawing that connection to Christ and the cross, but then it's also giving us modern application.

So you don't go straight from the text into modern application, or then you moralize the text.

You just make it into a moral lesson. It becomes something legalistic. You're imposing law.

You've even applied a meaning there that the text doesn't mean. You've trivialized it somehow.

There's all just, all kinds of disasters can happen because you went straight to application instead of following your travel instructions.

Very true. So you cross the bridge once you have all that eisegetical work done, pointing to Christ in the cross, and then giving modern application.

Now, when it comes to the application of the Sunday school lessons, I've left it up to the teachers to do that.

So in all of the lessons that I prepare, I'll help them with the gospel connection, but with any other kind of practical application, that's gonna be for that teacher to figure out for their class because they know their people and I don't.

There may be something in their class that they can see this directly speaking to, that they will tie that to for their people, that they don't need my help in doing that because then

I'm gonna specialize it for one class and it doesn't necessarily apply to another. You know what I mean? Right, definitely.

Right. So we'll - Every class has their strengths and weaknesses and it's good for the teacher to be able to point that, point everybody into iron sharpening iron kind of opportunities.

Now I've talked about these things here. We've kind of gone through the expository instructions, but I'm telling you going through the class itself is much, much better.

Oh, definitely. I highly encourage anybody to attend one of these expository workshops if you can.

You get a hands -on. You have to work. And work through it. Yeah, you actually have to work.

You will get an assignment when you sign up for the class that you then have to work through and then you're gonna come and present your work and somebody is gonna critique it.

Yes, in a good way. Right, in a good way. It's helpful. This is what people come away from the class saying was the best part.

Yeah. That they got their little small group and they presented their work and the other pastors critique that work and they learned all those disciplines and they forged these bonds.

Pastors exchange phone numbers and email addresses. I've watched pastors buy gifts for each other in the midst of those classes.

Oh, it's great. It's just, it's wonderful. If you can get to one of those expository workshops, do so.

Yeah. The next one's at SHEPCON. If you go to, oh, it's

G3 website. If you go to the G3 website, you'll get there. There will be somewhere on there that will provide you a link that'll get to.

G3conference. It's G3min. G3min. G, the number three, M -I -N.

Oh, M -I -N. .org. Gotcha. Or .com might get you there as well. I do that every time.

You do, I think. Every single time. There it is, G3min .org.

And if you can remember to attach slash events, then that'll get you on the events page and you can see even by date when all of the next expository workshops are coming up.

Sweet. Now, the expository workshops are exclusively for pastors. Right.

So we're trying to, or I mean, even aspiring pastors. It's not just pastors who are currently preaching and teaching, but there could be elders in training.

We've had Sunday school teachers in the expository workshop, somebody that wasn't preaching at all, but they just wanted to grow in how they were preparing and delivering their lessons and things like that.

And lay, lay? Lay elders. Elders? Yeah. Is that what you call them? Lay elders as well.

Even lay elders have been a part of teaching the course as well. There might be a small group leader who's a lay elder. Okay.

So very good. We've got a lay elder here who has a doctorate. Yes. So how much you actually call him a lay elder, just because he's not full -time staff?

I don't think he is called a lay elder. It's just because he's not full -time. He's not full -time paid.

Yeah. Anyway. But last I heard, there was talk about making it geared towards ladies like for who want to teach

Bible studies. Yeah, there is a desire for that. I'm not sure how far along they are in putting all that together, but somewhere down the line, it may not be in 2022.

Right. It might be in 2023, but they're wanting to put together an expository workshop for women so that women are learning these things as well.

If you have women's groups at church, I don't see how this is necessary for a woman to have to learn this.

And even ladies groups at church, you don't have to have one. But if you do, this is a good discipline to learn.

Definitely. And then be able to apply those principles to teaching in the women's courses that you may have at your church.

Or even private Bible study too. Yeah. So be praying for that.

Yes. What I was... All of that's in the works. Yes. This is one way of how you can pray for that.

So pray for that ministry. You're awfully distracted by your phone over there. I keep getting a call. Oh, do you know who it is?

It's for Zeej. One of our son's friends. Yes. Is calling while we're doing this podcast.

And I can't answer to say, hey, don't call anyone. To call at the moment.

Well, let me come back to this question and make sure that I got all of it here. So this was Jason who said, share the differences between topical expository and whatever other styles are out there.

Should your church sermons be all expository style or should there be a balance between both styles?

Now style is a little different. You can have a topical sermon. Like today we're talking about money.

We're gonna talk about marriage. We're gonna talk about parenting, whatever it is. Sure. There's nothing wrong with doing that.

Like your church is not sinning if suddenly your pastor's finished up one series and in between he starts doing a bunch of topical things.

But the main diet should be expository preaching. Now expository preaching does not mean verse by verse entire books of the

Bible. Although that's commonly how people think of expository preaching. Yeah, that's how

I thought of it whenever we were first talking about it. I can tell you there are plenty of teachers that I've sat under who did that.

They taught entire books of the Bible, but they were not expository. So it's like this week we're looking at James chapter one and I'm now gonna take this and apply it to something moral.

Like they're just drawing moral lessons out of it instead of following the understanding of James writing to this audience for this reason and getting all of that right in context.

Instead, we might be doing a verse by verse teaching of this particular book, but every lesson becomes some sort of a moral lesson instead of understanding the meaning of the text.

So somebody can be doing verse by verse and not be expository. Generally, your commitment to expository preaching means you're gonna go through entire books of the

Bible. But just because somebody's going through a book of the Bible doesn't mean they're being expository.

It's very true. Makes sense? Glad you clarified that, yes. And then again, with your topical sermons, even if you're talking about something regarding marriage, the work, the exegetical work that you've done prior to that sermon still needed to be expository.

All of your passages that you're using, always good to have a central passage even that you start with and is kind of something you keep coming back to.

But even with that, you're still using the text in the right way because you've done your expository work to know the meaning of the text.

Yes. That's what I was gonna say. Any other questions? Well, thank you for coming class.

Let's pray and we'll be dismissed. When I do that in Sunday school, do you sit in your chair and you go, yes, let's?

No. Let's pray. Yes, let's. That'd be hilarious if I heard you say that. I don't think

I'd be able to pray after that. I'd be laughing, so. No, I'm just like, okay, you know.

I have to be - I don't know if I say anything. I have to be especially careful when I'm teaching my Sunday school class not to make eye contact with Becky and the baby over there.

Oh my goodness. Because y 'all are adorable. Becky playing with our little child.

Well, I only play with him because I want him to be quiet and I can listen. I don't look over in that direction.

But what's funny is I see other people looking over in your direction. I didn't realize we were so distracting.

This past Sunday though, she left him in the nursery. I was amazed. I didn't know you were ready for that yet.

Well, I mean, he was getting loud, so I just -

I'll let the nursery care workers have to deal with this. He can be as loud as he wants in there. Play with all the new toys.

Yeah, he gets kind of bored with me after a while. And we don't have him here this time because he's with his oldest sister.

Yay. So there we go. She's 13, almost 14. Next week. That's right, next week she turns 14.

She's perfectly capable of taking care of the baby. So she's got him right now. Very capable. All right, well, your phone's going off again.

So I suppose we don't have a baby crying in here this week. We just have a phone going. We got phones ringing.

Good thing it's on vibrate. Turn off your phone before you go into church or Sunday school this morning, or this morning.

This Sunday, that's what I meant by that, yeah. Heavenly Father, we thank you for our time together. And as we learn about God's word and how we teach

God's word, how we understand God's word, we know that we need your spirit to understand these things.

Every single teaching lesson that is done, may it be covered with prayer. God guide us in these things.

May we handle the text in a right way that shows Christ to the people who are needing to be reminded of the gospel today or hearing it for the very first time, whatever it might happen to be.

We read in Romans 10, 17, that faith comes by hearing and hearing through the word of Christ.

So may we grow in our faith as we submit ourselves to this word that is the very word of God that we have in the pages of the

Bible. Teach us as we go. Give us a good church to be in as we gather with the saints this coming

Sunday. And may we do all things to the praise and glory of your name. It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.