Verse By Verse Bible Exposition

How do you prepare for expository preaching? It is by expository study. The text always comes first. It has to be in its context. When you are studying a specific verse what does everything around it say? These are the verses before and the verses after. The chapter and verse separations are not inspired. They are pretty accurate but they are not inspired. Do not go to another book first, go to the Bible text first, always! Read it over and over. There are some great study books. I start with a couple of different translations. My main preference is the New KJV. I personally believe the KJV is the best translation over all but some words have changed in the English language since 1611 AD. That’s why I like the NKJV best. That is what I preach from. I also like the NASB and the NIV translations. I never use paraphrases in study or in the pulpit. I also like the NKJV when I am doing multi-ethnic ministry and I have a translator in the service. Another book is a concordance. My pref...

  W hy do I believe so strongly in expository preaching? Because I believe it is the only right and proper way to truly preach the Bible. I do not determine the subject of the sermon. The scripture passage determines the subject and the main point of the sermon. The passage verse by verse and thought by thought are the content of the sermon. This is true exposition. The first paragraph might look familiar. That is how I opened the first blog post. Good expository preaching all hinges on accurate Bible interpretation. How do you do that? It is really not that difficult and it is not at all impossible. Congregations hear different interpretations of the same passage. How do they know which one is correct? Can a scripture passage have 2 different interpretations? I don’t believe so. How do we know we have the right one? It takes some work. First is simply reading the text and the context. If you don’t look at the context you may not interpret the text correctly. Does the interpret...

In these weekly blog posting I have shared my thoughts of how and why I preach the way that I do. This is not original with me. This is how I learned during my years at Baptist Bible College in Clarks Summit, PA in the late 1970’s. It is now known as Clarks Summit University. I am very proud be an alumnus of that institution and I am very blessed to have received my training there. There are a number of names of great, godly men that I would like to mention. Dr. John Benson, Dr. Ken Elgena, Dr. Rembert Carter, Dr. Charles Emert and Professor Glen Crab were just some of the great instructors that I learned much from. I also learned from 3 of my pastors from those days. Pastor Charles Benedict, Pastor Wilbur Rooke and Pastor Milo Thompson all hold special place in my heart. Dr. Carl Elgena, Dr. Earnest Pickering, Dr. Dan Gelatt and Dr. Mark Jackson also had a great influence on me as I entered and served in pastoral ministry. I say that to say this. You can always learn from older, m...

So how do you create and preach a true expository sermon? I should be clear at the beginning that I preach from an outline not a manuscript. A manuscript sermon is when the preacher writes out his sermon word for word and basically reads from it in the pulpit. It is not wrong and it helps many preachers keep on track both subject wise and timing. It is just too confining for me. I preach from a one page outline and have learned how to stay on track both with the subject and with the time. My study of the passage throughout the week keeps my heart and mind saturated with the passage. Then when I come to the pulpit to preach it on Sunday it flows out of me from my time of study. I usually have more trouble keeping it to a 30 minute sermon than I do working to fill the allotted time. The first step and most important is this. What is the main point of the passage? I will illustrate with Psalm 3. The main point of this psalm is David’s trouble with his son Absalom. It was written when A...

Sometimes the hardest time for this preacher is when he is not pastoring and has to listen to other pastors. When you have devoted your life to preaching it is sometimes (not always) very difficult to listen to others after you leave a pastorate. Almost 20 years ago I was in that position. We were attending a small church about 20 miles from us. We were personal friends with the pastor and his wife for many years. He was preaching a series through the Book of I John. One Sunday morning every song was about Pentecost. So I figured that he was taking a detour from his series in I John since Pentecost is in Acts and not I John and there is no reference to Pentecost in I John. Oh no, he was preaching from I John 2:20 where it says "But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you know all things." He went on to say in his sermon that "we are anointed by the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost." Therefore the whole sermon was centered on Pentecost a...

How do you know if a sermon you are listening to is expository? It is really not that hard. 1. Do they have a main text or passage of scripture and do they stick to it? I like to have a passage that is 4-6 verses in length. That is not a hard and fast rule. It will be dictated by the passage itself. The authors think and write like we do. They have groups of thought. One group of thought should usually be one sermon. Much of the Bible was written in paragraphs. Those paragraphs usually contain one main thought. A sermon should never be just one word or just one verse. It needs to be taken in its complete context. 2. Does the preacher stick to that text for the whole sermon? Not to say that they can't refer to related or to supporting verses elsewhere in the Bible. But that should be at a minimum. If they jump to another passage and stay there for more than a few minutes then it is no longer an expository sermon. I have seen preachers go to 20-30 other verses in one sermon. Th...

If it isn't in the passage it shouldn't be in the sermon! That has been my rule for the past 50 years since I preached my first sermon as a teenager. I believe every sermon should be a passage of Scripture, not just one verse and especially not just one word. When you take a word or verse out of context you can very quickly lose its correct meaning. When you stay in the context of the surrounding verses, chapter and book then you are much more likely to have the correct interpretation, meaning and preaching. It takes work and effort to preach expository sermons. It is much easier just to make up what you want to say instead of searching out the correct meaning of the verse(s). In my pastoring days I often struggled with passages to make sure I had it right. A couple of times I even rewrote my sermon notes on Saturday evening to make sure I preached it correctly on Sunday morning. It is actually the passage of Scripture that preaches the sermon not me. For the past 11 years ...

 W hy do I believe so strongly in expository preaching? Because I believe it is the only right and proper way to truly preach the Bible. I do not determine the subject of the sermon. The scripture passage determines the subject and main point of the sermon. The passage verse by verse and thought by thought are the content of the sermon. This is true exposition. 99% or more of the churches in the USA do not preach this way. In the last 11 years since my last pastorate I have not been in a single church of any denomination that preaches this way every single week. A few hit on an expository sermon once in a while. It seems like it is almost by accident. It should be deliberate, planned and continued week after week.  If we are going to preach the Bible we must preach it the way God gave it to us. It is His Word. It is His Message. If we go into and preach our ideas and thoughts then it is our message not God's. My ideas, my thoughts and my opinions are totally worthless in v...