Verse By Verse Bible Exposition

I have never done this before and I probably never will again but today I must. I will give my blog over to speak about a dear friend of mine who entered heaven last night after a short illness. Pastor Bill Park has been a friend of mine, my pastor, colleague, teacher, missions leader for many year years now. I first met him 40 years ago. My first pastorate was 15 miles from his church at the time, High Point Baptist Chapel. After resigning my first pastorate we attended his church in Geigertown, PA for about 15 months before we moved on to our next ministry in NY State. We felt at home at High Point there like no other church I have attended since starting in pastoral ministry. He was a father to me in ministry like I never had with my own father. My own father had died on the mission field 13 years earlier. My father’s death was one of the biggest losses in my life. Pastor Bill left this life as I was writing the first draft of this blog. My heart is breaking and aching for his fam

  I believe that every sermon should be expository. You may not agree with me but that is alright. Many don’t. But let me tell you why I believe it. Years ago is was part of a state fellowship of churches. Every fall we would have a 3 day annual conference. I remember many years that we had some great speaker, Bible expositors and true to the Word in every service that they preached. But is seemed like every other year we would have a real dud. Someone would give us their mighty opinion about this or that. One I remember well one who gave us lists of what we should do and what we shouldn’t do as pastors. It had very little or no basis from God’s Word except he would always read a verse or two that supposedly all of these “great” ideas of his came from. Nothing could be further from the truth. I went to the state leader after one of these dead services and asked, “Why can’t we have great Bible expositors like we have had in previous years?” He answered me, “Well Dave not every sermo

This might stir up some discussion, but it is not a hill that I will die on. Honestly I just want you to think about it. Why do we have so many Bible study books, Bible study discussion guides, study Bibles, Bible translations and paraphrases, Bible commentaries, hymnals and song books? I believe it was back in the 70’s when the movie “All the President’s Men” based on the Watergate scandal made popular phrase “Follow the money.” It seems like every few years now someone is publishing a new Bible translation or paraphrase. One just came out a couple of years ago by a well-known preacher and author. There are always new “Bible Study” courses coming out by various publishing houses. Not only do you have the “Bible Study” book itself but there is always a “Bible Study Discussion Guide” along with it. Sometimes there are also videos and marketing materials that you can buy along with that. I used to know a pastor who bought almost every new “Bible Study” course or system that came out.

I am convinced that most evangelical preachers and churches do not believe in the Holy Spirit. If they say they do in their doctrinal statement they certainly do not in their preaching. They constantly try to take over the role of the Holy Spirit. My purpose and goal as a Bible preacher it to preach, herald or proclaim the Word of God. I am to preach what it says, not what I think. On a recent Sunday morning I sat in a service where the preacher said everything about what he thinks and not what God says. He has his reasons, his goal, his ambitions and his thoughts. He used a lot of Bible verses but not a single passage of scripture. He was preaching on “Listening to God” but he himself was not listening to God nor could he tell others how to listen to God. He didn’t even expound the text that he gave for his sermon. He summarized the narrative of the text in about one minute but he did nothing more than that. He was telling the congregation to “listen to God” when he himself did not

When my wife became a Christian at age 18, she was one of a family of 10. One day a friend of hers invited her to go to church with him. She heard the gospel for the first time and accepted Jesus Christ as her Savior that day. The pastor of the church where she got saved baptized her a few weeks later as a new believer. He was the first Christian leader she ever knew well. He is still a good friend of ours now 50 years later. One of the first pieces of advice that he gave her was about Bible study. She listened to his preaching Sunday after Sunday. But he told her, “Don’t trust me, look it up for yourself!” And that is what she did and what she does faithfully unto this day. Every Christian is able to read and understand the Bible for themselves. They can study it and learn from it every day of the week. Some Christians don’t really believe that. They think that they can only understand the Bible by listening to preachers, reading Christian books and going to Bible studies. Nothing

I have mentioned Bible translations in previous blogs but I want to go further into depth in this blog. For me Bible translations is not a hill to die on in debating other people. This is simply my opinion. My personal beliefs, convictions and doctrinal stand are based on the original manuscripts not a translation.  I know some very strong KJV only people and I know some who will use any translation or paraphrase that is out there. I am not at all a KJV only person. I won’t even preach from the KJV unless I am speaking in a KJV only church, which is rare. My favorite translation to use is the NJKV. I do believe that the KJV is the most accurate verse by verse translation that we have today but the language has changed over the last 400 years. I believe that the NKJV keeps the translation accuracy but updates the wording from hundreds of years ago. This is why I believe God used the Hebrew and Greek languages for the original manuscripts. They are two languages that change the least o