Written by Matthew T. Martens and Theodore D. Martens |
Friday, August 11, 2023
Study the text. Understand its words. Observe the relationship of the words to one another. Consider the structure. But do all of this not as an end itself. Do it in order to get to the point of the text. Only then can you deliver a truly expository sermon that makes the point of the text the point of your sermon in a way that will thoroughly furnish your congregation unto all good works (2 Tim 3:17).

Common in conservative evangelical circles today—certainly among the readers of ministries like 9Marks—is a professed commitment to expository preaching. We say “professed” commitment because our experience over decades as both a pastor and faithful church member, having either delivered or listened to thousands of sermons, has led us to the conclusion that much “expository preaching” does not in fact meet the definition.
Too many sermons focus on the biblical text, but fail to exposit the main point of the scriptural passage under consideration.  To be clear, this critique isn’t merely an academic or definitional one. If a sermon fails to unpack the main point of the text at hand, the pastor is failing to preach the whole counsel of God regardless of how throughly the speaker examines the scriptural passage. Such a sermon fails to communicate what God intended to communicate by inspiring that text.
Let’s be more specific. Two kinds of preaching are often confused with expository preaching because of a superficial resemblance: “sequential preaching” and “observational preaching.” We’ll discuss them below. We pray that this discussion will be edifying to preachers as you seek to feed your flocks.
1. Sequential preaching is not necessarily expository preaching.
Many preachers believe they’re engaged in expository preaching simply because they sequentially preach through a particular book of the Bible. While there’s much to commend about this approach, it doesn’t necessarily equate to expository preaching.
For example, a pastor may preach a 16-week series through the book of Romans. That fact by itself would cause many preachers to think they’re doing expository preaching. But it’s not. Whether the sequential preacher is delivering an expository sermon in any given week depends on two things:

whether the preacher has rightly identified the main point of the week’s assigned passage,
and whether the sermon then keeps as its focus the main point of the passage.

An example may clarify this point. If, in the third week of the series, the preacher delivers a sermon on Romans 3 that centers on and rightly explains the doctrine of inspiration, then the preacher would not be preaching an expository sermon. Why do we say that? Because the main point of Romans 3 is not the doctrine of inspiration, but rather the fallenness of man. The entire chapter builds to man’s fallenness; Paul surveys the Old Testament and concludes that “all have sinned and fall short of God’s glory” (3:23).
To be sure, the doctrine of inspiration is mentioned, but only in passing in verse 2 (“the very words of God,” NIV). Simply put, inspiration is not the main point of Romans 3. Rather, the inspiration of the Old Testament is invoked by Paul to give authoritative weight to his recitation of passages that make his main point.
Furthermore, the main point of Romans 3 is not the unbelief of Israel (vs. 3), the faithfulness of God (vs. 3), the righteousness of God (vs. 5), the coming judgment of the world (vs. 6), or the ways men demonstrate depravity (vs. 13–18). All of those concepts appear in Romans 3 not as ends in themselves, but rather as elements of an argument toward Paul’s main point: we all, Jew and Gentile alike, have a sin problem that we cannot solve.
What distinguishes an expository sermon is not simply that what the preacher is saying is biblically accurate, but that it draws its main truth from the main point of the passage. An expository sermon on Romans 3 requires that the main point of the sermon is the main point—not a sub-point, not peripheral to the main point—of Romans 3.
Of course, there’s value in sequentially preaching through books of the Bible. It helps to ensure that the whole counsel of God is preached and you have “kept nothing back that was profitable for” the congregation (Acts 20:20 KJV). Furthermore, by taking an entire book under study, the preacher is forced to grapple with the flow of the author’s argument throughout. This increases the likelihood that the preacher is rightly identifying the main point of a particular sermon’s text.
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Written by T. M. Suffield |
Sunday, June 4, 2023
If we chase after experiences we won’t find them, but that if we look to worship God in spirit and truth, we will have dramatic and dynamic encounters with God by his Spirit that will change us, change our churches, change our towns and cities, shake the foundations of the earth, challenge the powers successfully, and occasionally be just a little bit strange.

In my last post in this series filling out my ‘eucharismatic’ manifesto, I argued that the church exists to worship God, and therefore our primary purpose is worshipping God.
However, if you’ve been following along, you might think that this is an odd first step when I have argued that the church is defined by her encounters with God, which seems to shift the focus to us. That’s not right, church isn’t about us, it’s about God.
Except, I’m a Reformed Charismatic; Calvinistic in my understanding of salvation (and more). Which means I want to argue an important point that affects what happens on Sundays, but also everything else in the entire cosmos. It’s this: God always moves first.
When I repent what I discover is that in the counsels of the Almighty God, he first chose me and elected me to life, the Spirit regenerating my heart so that I can respond in faith to his call and repent. When God calls, he makes what he calls for happen.
When I move towards God and meet him, I will always find that he has moved first. God’s kindness is gratuitous, it overflows, what we call grace or gift is how God always works with his people.
It’s because of the Lord’s gracious posture towards us, his movement, that we can speak of the gathered Church as a series of encounters with God, or even of the Church itself as the mystery of the bride encountering the husband, the son encountering the father, the army encountering the general, the Temple bricks encountering the divine presence of Yahweh filling the holy of holies.
When we gather to worship God, he will have graciously ‘presenced’ himself with us. And before you cry that ‘God is everywhere’ and so can’t be especially present, you’re going to need to go and look at the holy of holies again.
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Dr. Williamson walked every Saturday to Mankato to preach to four hundred Dakota men imprisoned by the government during a recent war. In February 1863, Williamson and Gideon Pond baptized three hundred of the prisoners that came to believe the gospel. Dr. Williamson presided at the organization of the first church in Minnesota, and when it came time to organize the Synod of Minnesota in 1858, he led the proceedings in St. Paul. His sermon was delivered from Deuteronomy 8:2, “And thou shalt remember all the ways which the Lord thy God led thee.” He remembered the many ways the Lord had blessed his ministry as he recounted the history of early missionary work among the Dakotas.

Thomas Smith was born March 1800 in Union District, South Carolina, to Rev. William and Mary (Smith) Williamson. His father was pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Fair Forest. In 1805, the family moved to Adams County, Ohio, where Thomas studied in local schools to prepare for further work at Jefferson College in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania. He began studying medicine in Cincinnati but transferred to Yale to complete the Doctor of Medicine graduating in 1824. Dr. Williamson returned to Ohio to intern with a local physician in West Union before moving to Ripley to set up his own practice. In 1827, he married Margaret Poage, the daughter of Col. James Poage. During the first six years of marriage the Williamsons had three children, but they died in their early years with two passing away within just a few months of each other. In the early 1830s cholera occurred several times in Ohio and young children were especially susceptible to the disease, so the Williamson children may have died of cholera. Thomas and Margaret were stunned by the three-fold tragedy. The deaths raised questions of their direction in life and what would God have them to do. Thomas had come to faith in Christ while in college and as he and Margaret discussed their options, they believed they would serve the Lord in missions to the American Indians.
In the spring of 1833 physician and ruling elder Williamson began the process for becoming a missionary. He was taken under care of the Presbytery of Chillicothe and spent a year at Lane Theological Seminary studying for the ministry. At a presbytery meeting held at Red Oak in 1834 he was examined for licensure with trials including reading an exegetical paper composed in Latin answering the question whether Christ’s death was vicarious; provided a written paper on Psalm 2:7-12; and then he delivered a sermon on Mark 16:16, “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.” Trials completed, he was licensed and then combined pulpit supply with scouting the region of what is currently Minnesota to determine the best place for missions to the Indians. Williamson determined the Dakota people provided the best opportunity. He reported to Chillicothe Presbytery his findings and on September 18, 1834 he was ordained an evangelist working with the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM). Thomas, Margaret, and his wife’s sister, Mary Poage, joined Alexander G. Huggins, a school teacher, and his family for the journey. They departed Ripley April 1, 1835 and headed up the Mississippi on a steamboat arriving May 16 at Fort Snelling near Minneapolis.
During the weeks at Fort Snelling the Williamsons adjusted to frontier life and gathered goods to take with them to their place of ministry. In Fort Snelling June 11, 1835, Williamson organized the first Presbyterian congregation in the region that would become Minnesota with nineteen members and four ruling elders including U. S. Army Major G. A. Loomis. The church was named Presbyterian Church at St. Peters. Williamson later conducted the wedding ceremony for Loomis’s daughter, Eliza Edna, when she married Lt. Edward A. Ogden. It was the first marriage service by a clergyman in what would become Minnesota.
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