Episode 17: Nuts and Bolts of Expositional Preaching

The Rural Church Podcast, 2 .0. Just a couple of pastors discussing life, ministry, theology, and the gospel from a local church perspective.

Eddie, what's it time for? The Rural Church Podcast. The Rural Church Podcast, episode 17.

Eddie and I continue our discussion here about preaching through Ephesians. Then we talk about preaching through other things in the church, like confessions of faith and such.

Hope you enjoy this episode of The Rural Church Podcast. So now you're in Ephesians 5, right?

Yeah. When you're working through a text like Ephesians 5, you said you're in verse 3 or 4?

6. 6. 6. So in the actual preaching this coming

Sunday, how much of that text will you read? Will you just read the verse or will you read a larger section?

I don't know yet. Last week, and this usually kind of happens, but last week

I preached 3 through 6. Now we're coming back and we're looking at verse 6.

I'm not sure. Sometimes I'll just read verse 6. Sometimes I might reread 3 through 6, but I will make mention.

One of the hard things about preaching so many sermons is you got to make sure, okay, this is in the book of Ephesians, but this is in a context here, a pericope, as it were, of what

Paul is making this point here. So I just finished really basically

Ephesians 4, let's see, verse 25 through 5 .2 is kind of a section.

And so really last week I kind of transitioned out of that section into a new section. And so I kind of gave that sermon.

And now I'm going to go back and do verse 6. And then I'm actually going to go back to verse 4 the next week, because it's going to be right before Thanksgiving.

And verse 4 at the end says, let there be Thanksgiving. And I'm going to talk about that and kind of hone it.

Usually what I end up doing is at some point preaching the entire pericope and kind of walking through the big points, and then

I go back and tackle some things. However, sometimes

I don't preach the one message on the entire pericope, but in each message,

I end up saying, remember, this is part of this section. This is part of this section. This is part of this section.

So do you ever, when you're preaching through a book, have something in that book that actually takes you somewhere else in the

Scripture, and you really basically preach a message on another, what is basically another passage of Scripture as it relates to the book that you're preaching through?

I'll give you an example of what I'm talking about. This last week, as I was preparing to preach my sermon from Jonah, I almost just went ahead and preached one message from Matthew 12, where Jesus talks about the sign of Jonah.

And I would have, except for I'd really dealt with that when Jesus does it in Luke, when I'd preached through Luke, and so I went ahead and didn't do that.

But had I not done that back when I went through Luke, I probably would have just took

Jonah 117 and used that to go over to Matthew, and then just preached

Matthew 12. I probably would have done that. That happens. When I was preaching through Ruth, my first message was, is in the time period of the

Judges. And I didn't even preach. I really didn't preach Ruth 1 -1, other than I just said, this is the time period of the

Judges. What's the Judges? And then I preached a message from the Book of Judges. When we were in Ephesians, is it chapter 3, where it talks about they were strangers to the covenants of promise?

I preached, maybe 3 -12, I preached a message called Baptist Covenant Theology, and we just walked through that.

This coming week, we're talking about the wrath of God. Because of these things, the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.

You notice that that is in the present. The wrath of God comes, rather than the wrath of God will come.

Well, I do think it's a future. I do think it's primarily a future thing. However, there's another place that Paul talks about the wrath of God presently, which is where?

Romans 1. And so there will be a portion in this sermon that I will actually go to Romans 1.

I'll read Romans 1, 18 -32. You could almost just preach a message from that.

But I think sometimes that is warranted. And that's what I mean, Eddie, when

I say preaching expositional sermons well is going to give our people the full counsel of the

Word of God. Right. And let's be clear. Exposition isn't only when we're preaching through a book of the

Bible. I would argue that I mentioned, it may have been in last week's podcast.

The two podcasts are running together a little bit. But I mentioned that August and September, I preached a series of sermons through some subjects that I thought our church needed to hear.

I would argue that all of those messages were expositions. I went to a text that dealt with what we were talking about, and it was still an exposition of a text, even though it wasn't a whole book or whatever.

And so with that being said, would you like to just talk a little bit about preaching expositionally even when you're dealing with a topic like Baptist covenant theology?

Yes. Expositional preaching, if I could just put it this way, is you're preaching what the

Bible says. And so there is a way even to preach topically expositionally in the sense that you're trying to faithfully exposit the grand narrative of the

Bible or even a systematic like, I'm going to preach today.

Let's say it's October and you're going to have five sermons on the five solas.

And you can actually preach those faithfully expositionally, maybe from one text or even multiple texts, because you're just trying to exposit what the

Bible teaches. And so when we went through the Baptist covenant theology, I just went to the text that dealt with the covenants in the scripture.

And then, of course, we talked about the two overarching covenants, the covenant of works and the covenant of grace.

And anyway, how Paul is saying, you Gentiles, you're brought in now, you're brought in to this one body.

So the point is that topical is not always bad.

And even within a series, sometimes topical can be necessary. I think some guys are probably too rigid about that.

I do think that there's mistakes, but the point is we're trying to people what

God's word has said. We have a book. We want the people to know God. They know

God through the preaching of his word, the faithful exposition of the scriptures. I think the mainstay died of a church ought to be preaching through books of the

Bible. But there are seasons and times that we want to look at topics that we need to address, those sorts of things.

And outside of the Sunday morning meeting, like you mentioned, it's not like that's the only time we're teaching.

Hopefully not. Right. Hopefully not. So, for example, in our church, every

Sunday morning, we read a catechism question at a Baptist catechism. It's printed in our bulletin.

It's read in the Sunday morning service. On Wednesday night, I cover that catechism question in our adult

Bible study. That's a great idea. So, right now, we're working through the questions on the

Ten Commandments. That's where we're at. But therein lies a person might say, well, it's not exposition.

I'm going through the catechism. Well, yeah, but we're going to the scripture. That's what

I'm doing. And oftentimes, I've found, for me, instead of trying to work through every different scripture reference the catechism gives,

I'll pick out the best one or two of those passages, and we'll really focus on those as we're considering the catechism question.

With that being said, maybe you could give some tips as to the way you teach through other—like when you're teaching through the

Confession of Faith, the 1689, Baptist Faith and Message, whatever—how that you apply and really get into the scripture from a document like that, a

Confession of Faith or some other text. Well, what's going on with a

Confession of Faith is you're going backwards. What I mean is a

Confession of Faith is an exposition, as it were, and you're going back now and you're showing—it's like the teacher.

Remember when you were growing up and the teacher, you gave the answer for the math problem, and she was like, no, no, no, that's not good enough because you could just guess and get it, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Show your work. Right, right, right. So you're like, uh, 14. Well, that's right, but I need to know.

I need to see that you understand how we got here. And so that's what you're doing with those sorts of things.

Like, this is right, but I don't need you to just confess this. I don't need you to just say, you know,

I believe in the Trinity. That's important, okay? But I also need you to see how we got there from the scriptures.

And so that's kind of when you're teaching through those things. That's kind of what you're doing.

And then the other thing happens, too, sometimes. So sometimes I've been preaching through or teaching through a book of the

Bible, and we get to a portion that is a main text, say, for the confession or something, and then you might run off into that and talk about that for a little bit.

For example, we're in Exodus 19 right now on Sunday nights, and that's where God is preparing the people.

He says, there's limits. There's limits to coming to meet, because I'm about to give this covenant with Moses, and you can't come near the mountain, you'll die.

So God sets limits on how his people approach him.

And so I've taken that and I'm actually talking about the regulative principle of worship, how

God actually limits the way that we worship him by his revealed will.

And so sometimes it's going both ways. That's not what

I always do, but sometimes you come up on things like that that I think are important. And for our churches, worship is a thing.

At this time, it's something that we need to address and look at and consider. And so it all just kind of fits in together.

Yeah. And I teach every week. We have a recovery ministry, a women's recovery facility here in Marshall that I'm a chaplain, and I'm one of the teachers there.

And so I teach through the statement of faith. We have a statement of faith that everybody has to agree to that's part of the program and stuff.

And so I teach through the statement of faith every week. Well, one, the women are in the program for a year.

So I've got a year with them and I've got two to two and a half hours every week.

So I'm in no hurry. So we go through every verse attached to every article in the statement of faith.

But that's kind of because I've just got so much time. And if it takes us, well, we just finished last week, we finished going through the article on the person of the

Holy Spirit. Well, we spent like five or six weeks just going through the article on the person of the

Holy Spirit. Yeah. This is what this is saying and why. Right. Because we were able to walk through so many texts of Scripture.

And so I think sometimes you're setting to it's man, it's OK to slow down and take some time and really, especially in those teaching sessions where it's not, you know, where it's maybe a little more dialogical and people can ask questions.

Man, it's so fruitful when you can really take your time.

And so I think sometimes depending on how a church does their meetings, but if it's a

Sunday school or a Wednesday evening session, it's OK to not make it through everything that night if you get into fruitful discussion about what the

Scriptures are teaching. I hear what you're saying. I'm sorry too. I'm preaching through Ephesians too quickly.

You're saying it's OK to go slow. That's right, man. Slow down. Slow down. What are you going so fast for?

Thank you for that word, brother, because last week I did preach four verses and I had some comments from some guys wondering what was going on.

Am I OK? You know, is everything good? You're going to cover four verses.

I think covering these statements, you know, as Baptists historically, we're really bad about not understanding our history.

And so I think it's important to understand even if your church, which right now our church, we currently confess the

Baptist Faith and Message 2000, and we actually haven't started the 1689 yet. I'm actually just from with everything that's kind of gone on.

We're probably going to start in January, maybe mid -January. It's hard to start, you know, January 1st being on a

Sunday this year. So I'm probably not going to start like the first or second week. It's just hard.

People still operate no matter what age they are. People kind of operate around the semester system, you know, and so probably maybe mid -January.

But the point is, even if your church is a Baptist Faith and Message 2000, like, I think it's worthwhile walking through these things.

Like, this is what this statement says. This is what we believe. And those things can answer a lot of questions.

It's why you need a good confession of faith. Those things can answer a lot of questions that you might have or that you might want to talk about.

But it's already answered. For example, let's talk about the

SPC for a second. You say, well, we want to bring this lady on as pastor of children.

Can we do that? Well, you can if you're a Saddleback. Right. If you look at the

Baptist Faith and Message 2000, you're like, guys, we don't even have to debate this. This is already, it's already there.

Only qualified men are called. So, boom, we're done. But anyway, it should be, these kind of things should be much more helpful, and it's worthwhile.

It's worthwhile walking through these things and doing an exposition of these things as well.

And by the way, even something you might not agree with, certain historical documents that you might not agree with everything, could still be helpful to walk through and discuss, because you're saying this is what brothers and sisters from times past have said or confessed, and this is why they said it.

And maybe there's some areas that we agree with here. And for example, I went through the Apostles' Creed one time, and we confessed and agreed with the

Apostles' Creed, but we got to that portion about Jesus descending into hell. And I know that there's a lot of, but I just said, look, we just, we don't, the way that we've taught it to our children, we just leave it out because it's just, and I know some people would want to maybe excommunicate me for that, but I'm just saying it's not the scriptures.

And it's just overall something that we've decided in prudence to dismiss, but anyway.

Well, me and my sons are reading a biography of Luther, and I should have probably looked it over a little better before I started reading it with them, and maybe

I should just not be so stubborn and release them from how difficult this is.

But it's a really small little biography, but it is on about a master's level, so I feel bad for them.

Your kids are real smart. It's pretty tough slog, but we were reading the other day, and Luther was there talking about teaching his children, and he pointed out three things, and it just points out honestly how much we need greater biblical and even religious

Christian education in the lives of the average Christian, because he spoke of three different things that he was teaching his children that people needed to know.

The Ten Commandments, the Apostles' Creed, and the Lord's Prayer. And I thought, what a percentage of professing

Christians wouldn't know those, just those. Not children, not children.

No, no, no, no, no. I'm talking about adults that wouldn't know the

Ten Commandments, especially in order, the Lord's Prayer, and the

Apostles' Creed. And even if a person wanted to say, well, you don't have to. The Apostles' Creed is not the

Bible. Okay, even if we just went the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments in order,

I think you would be hard -pressed to find a majority. And so the value of what we might think is simplistic, but if you know those three things, you're probably more well -educated.

And if you know those three things, and you're sitting under regular expository preaching, you're probably in the top, top, top percent of Christians.

It's just sad of how biblically and historically just lazy and ignorant so many professing

Christians are. And then you try to press these things, and sometimes you're just like a real radical.

But I tell you, brother, I think it's time to land the plane.

What do you think? Yeah, yeah. I can't see on my end the clock, but it feels like we've been going for a little while.

It's a two -part episode, actually. So grateful that you've joined us, and we hope that you are ready.

By now, your Christmas tree ought to be up. Oh, yeah. You ought to be listening to Christmas music.

You ought to be enjoying all the festivities by this point. We appreciate our listeners.

We appreciate the interaction we get. Reach out to us on Twitter and let us know what you think, if there's anything that you'd like us to talk about.

And we'll end it there. Thanks for joining us on this episode of the