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 |
Saturday, October 26, 2024
When we start to run down the roots of removing Adam from the story, what we’re left with isn’t Christianity. I do think this is a hill to die on. If Adam isn’t my head, neither is Christ. Adam is real and Adam’s sin flows to all of us. That one man who knew God was tricked by a snake and brought ruin to everything. There was another man who faced a test in a garden (Mark 14), another man who battled a serpent (Hebrews 4), another man who stood with a woman in a garden at the start of a new creation (John 21). These two men: Adam and the Lord Jesus Christ define history.

Last week I argued that the Bible requires Adam to be the first human and the father of us all. I went through some scriptures that support this, especially Acts 17 and Romans 5.
I argued that the Bible says he is, but also that he has to be to be our federal head. Paul’s argument in Romans 5 (and 1 Corinthians 15) requires it.
To pick up the thread again, I want to argue the other way around: why is it a problem if Adam isn’t my federal head?
The Fall
If Adam is not my representative head, then my fall in Adam becomes a fiction. I’d be on the hook for my own sins, but not born into sin. In which case, presumably I can rescue myself if only I could obey? I pick up this thread below.
If I’ve still fallen in Adam despite not having any connection with him, then instead the fall seems to be applied to me by divine whim with no grounding in reality. It sounds unfair, though I’m wary of that argument as lots of things do that aren’t, but how can I trust my salvation if God is arbitrary and acts on a whim? God is sovereign over all but acts in accordance with his character and the rules of the cosmos. The cosmos is ordered, not wild. Salvation is logical and in accordance with the scriptures.
Instead, my salvation in Christ is real. God is not arbitrary. The fall is not a fiction: I am born with both inherited guilt and inherited pollution and I continue in my father Adam’s footsteps.
Original Sin
If we deny that all are born in Adam, it would, perhaps, be theoretically possible for me to have not sinned and attain righteousness myself. Why then do I need the cross? Perhaps I just need to be good.
This is a strain of what was condemned as Pelagianism in the early church. It doesn’t save but grows our pride. It’s thinking just like Adam’s in the garden. Perhaps I too could be like God. It ends up much the same way.
Instead, I desperately need rescue. I cannot do good without the Spirit as I am turned in on myself. I can be rescued through faith in Christ: his life is purchased for me and I can receive it. In fact, I can’t even fall myself, because all I have is gift.
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Written by J. V. Fesko |
Thursday, May 25, 2023
Preachers, therefore, have the responsibility to preach both indicatives and imperatives, but we must always be mindful of their logical order. Indicatives (what Christ has done for us) always serve as the foundation for the imperatives (our Christian conduct). We can never reverse this logical order. Christ, through the work of the Spirit, is the source of our capacity and ability for growth in sanctification. We do not offer our good works (imperative first) so we can then somehow secure the indicative of redemption.

There is a myriad of books about preaching on the market at present, and each of them presents useful information, tips, and methods for preaching a good sermon. Yet, when I’m evaluating a sermon or preparing my own messages, there are four simple questions that I ask myself:
1. Did I exegete the text?
Why should you ask whether the preacher exegeted the text? Believe it or not, there are many preachers who mount the pulpit, speak for thirty to forty minutes, and never really engage the biblical text in any significant way. I have personally sat under “preaching” where the message, at least in my mind, had no clearly discernable connection to the sermon text. The pastor spent more time offering personal observations, opinions, and commentary on recent news events than the biblical text.
Another type of “sermon” that I’ve heard is when a preacher reads a biblical text and then picks up a word, phrase, or concept that appears in the text and uses it as a springboard to a message that might be vaguely related to the passage at hand. I have heard some, for example, cite Deuteronomy 6:7, “You shall teach them [the words of Deuteronomy 6:4] diligently to your children…” as grounds for advocating home schooling as the only legitimate form of childhood educating. The text, I have been told, explicitly assigns education to parents, not to a public or Christian school.
Such an interpretation picks up on two elements in the verse—parents(implicit in the passage) and teach. But these two words have a greater context—the context is the law of God and the first greatest commandment:

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” (Deut. 6:4-5)

The context is not about education in general but rather instructing children to love the Lord with all their being. In Pauline terms, the passage addresses, among other things, raising children in the fear and admonition of the Lord (Eph. 6:4).
Hence, a fundamental question the preacher should always ask himself is, did I exegete the text? Did I examine the surrounding context? Did I historically locate the passage? Did I pay attention to specific or unique terminology? If I’m preaching from an Old Testament passage, did I examine how the New Testament appeals to, alludes to, or echoes the text? These are all vital questions that the preacher should ask to ensure that he properly handles the text and “draws out” (what the term exegesis means) from the passage the intended meaning, rather than inserting ideas that are foreign to the text.
In your sermon, you might not refer to all of your exegetical work. Preaching is akin to telling what time it is rather than disassembling the clock and showing how it’s made. Nevertheless, a good sermon still needs properly functioning inner gears and whirring wheels so that the preacher can accurately tell his congregation what time it is. But just because you don’t reveal the inner workings of the clock does not mean you don’t need those internal mechanisms. On the contrary, exegesis is the foundation of any good sermon. So always ask, did I exegete the text?
2. Did I explain the text?
When I evaluate a sermon or my own preaching, the second key question I ask is whether I adequately explained the biblical text. This is a distinct issue from the first question, namely, did I exegete the biblical text? Exegesis is foundational to a solid sermon—it ensures that you accurately represent the text in your sermon and don’t introduce foreign ideas to the Bible. In other words, in a sermon the preacher wants to open a window to the voice of God—in the words of the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF), which is “the Holy Spirit speaking in Scripture” (WCF 1.10). But as important as exegesis is to a solid sermon, another vital element is explanation.
In the post-exilic Israelite community, we find the principle of explanation recorded in the text:

They [the Levites] read from the book, from the Law of God, clearly, and they gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading. (Neh. 8:8)

The priests did not merely read the word and leave the people floundering. Yes, as the Westminster Confession of Faith teaches, the Word of God is abundantly perspicuous (clear) in matters of salvation (WCF 1.7). Yet, it also acknowledges that there are some portions that are not “plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all.”
Hence, preachers need to exegete the Scriptures to ensure their message is text-driven, but they also need to explain the text to their congregation. Above I wrote that preachers need to tell their congregations what time it is rather than tell them how the clock was made, and now it might appear as though I’m giving contradictory counsel. How can you explain a text without showing all its parts in great detail?
There is a difference, I believe, in spouting off about Greek and Hebrew terms for which the congregation has no knowledge versus ensuring that the congregation understands what’s going on in the passage. I once preached from Isaiah 6 and told the congregation that the word for holy was the Hebrew term qadosh (queue the sound of a fighter jet screaming by at Mach 2 over the heads of the congregation).
While it was important for me to know the meaning of this term in my exegesis of the passage, it was unnecessary for me to quote the Hebrew. I only needed to say that holy means set apart and that the seraphim repeated the term three times to indicate the superlative to convey that God is the holiest of all beings.
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