Expository Preaching Blog #20 – “Fast Food Hamburgers vs Chef Prepared Steak”

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From time to time I get asked, why do churches, church leaders and even pastors not recognize and want expository preaching. I use this analogy.

Very few, and I mean very, very few churches, pastors and congregations have heard expository preaching. They hear “sermons” on subjects. They hear talks on whatever the preacher happens to want to say that Sunday. It will have one or more Bible verses mixed in with it and the preacher may even read from his Bible. But it is what he/she wants to say not what God has to say. They will read John 3:16 and spend 20-30 minutes pontificating on love and maybe even God’s love. They will not open up that verse and go word by word and thought by thought to bring out what that verse and the verses in its context teach. It will be what they think not what God thinks.

This is what equates to having fast food hamburgers for dinner every day. If you go to McDonalds and order a cheeseburger, you will get the same sandwich every single time. No matter what day, what time, what place it will always look the same, feel the same and taste the same every single time. I know, I have spent a lot of time of the road in my life.

It is not homemade. It is not cooked by a trained chef. It is not seasoned individually. Now if I go looking for a nice steak that is an entirely different meal.

My wife is a great cook. She has learned how to make countless delicious dishes and she knows how to prepare them individually with great skill, ingredients, seasonings and process. No two meals are exactly alike. Each one takes time and is always from fresh ingredients. Nothing is from prepared, processed products just found in the grocery stores, brought home and heated up!

This is the different between 95% of the preaching in our churches today. Most of it is just made up in someone’s mind and not fresh from the Word of God. I have heard preachers get their sermon’s from one else’s book. I have heard sermons where the preacher just copied and pasted from multiple commentaries week after week.

This is not preaching. True preaching is getting fresh study from the Scriptures. Taking it verse by verse, word by word and thought by thought. Preparing it fresh every week of the year. Bringing out the best flavors or meaning from the text. It is not dosing the meat in catsup and calling it a meal. Let the natural juices and flavors flow out of the text. Let the best parts of the passage be seen and feasted on. The Bible is described in the terms of milk and meat. So my analogy is not new with me.

Congregations have been fed a steady of fast food hamburgers for so long they no longer recognize the difference. They don’t even know there are gourmet meats and meals available. We don’t have trained chefs in our pulpits or if they are they are only flipping processed frozen burgers. We need preachers who can rightly divide the “Word of Truth.” It is worth the difference. You will be spiritually healthy for it.

 

 

Rev. David Johnson

Former Pastor

First Baptist Church of Austin, MN

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