Mark Dever rightly describes Expositional Preaching as “preaching that takes for the point of a sermon the point of a particular passage of Scripture.” However, I have heard many sermons that intend to be expositional, yet fall somewhat short. Below are seven pitfalls that one might try to avoid. Each of these pitfalls either doesn’t correctly make the message of the passage the message of the sermon, or doesn’t make it a message to that congregation at all.
1) THE POINT OF THE PASSAGE IS MISUNDERSTOOD: THE ‘UNFOUNDED SERMON.’
This is where the preacher says things that may or may not be true, but that in no sense came from the passage, when understood correctly. This can happen either by carelessness with the content of the text (e.g. the sermon on “production, prompting, and …show more content…
So, if the preacher does not have a correct biblical theology of worship, passages about the Old Testament temple might be wrongly applied to the New Testament church building, rather than being fulfilled in Christ and his people.
6) THE POINT OF THE PASSAGE IS DIVORCED FROM ITS GENERIC IMPACT: THE ‘DOCTRINAL SERMON.’
God has deliberately spoken to us ‘in many and diverse ways.’ Too many sermons ignore the genre of a passage, and preach narrative, poetry, epistle, and apocalyptic all alike as a series of propositional statements. Whilst all preaching must convey propositional truths, they should not be reduced to them. The literary context of the passages should mean that a sermon from the Song of Songs sounds different than one from Ephesians 5. The passage may have the same central point, but it is conveyed in a different way. Such diversity is not to be flattened in preaching.
7) THE POINT OF THE PASSAGE IS PREACHED WITHOUT REFERENCE TO THE PASSAGE: THE ‘SHORTCUT
1) THE POINT OF THE PASSAGE IS MISUNDERSTOOD: THE ‘UNFOUNDED SERMON.’
This is where the preacher says things that may or may not be true, but that in no sense came from the passage, when understood correctly. This can happen either by carelessness with the content of the text (e.g. the sermon on “production, prompting, and …show more content…
So, if the preacher does not have a correct biblical theology of worship, passages about the Old Testament temple might be wrongly applied to the New Testament church building, rather than being fulfilled in Christ and his people.
6) THE POINT OF THE PASSAGE IS DIVORCED FROM ITS GENERIC IMPACT: THE ‘DOCTRINAL SERMON.’
God has deliberately spoken to us ‘in many and diverse ways.’ Too many sermons ignore the genre of a passage, and preach narrative, poetry, epistle, and apocalyptic all alike as a series of propositional statements. Whilst all preaching must convey propositional truths, they should not be reduced to them. The literary context of the passages should mean that a sermon from the Song of Songs sounds different than one from Ephesians 5. The passage may have the same central point, but it is conveyed in a different way. Such diversity is not to be flattened in preaching.
7) THE POINT OF THE PASSAGE IS PREACHED WITHOUT REFERENCE TO THE PASSAGE: THE ‘SHORTCUT