Last month I began a series on Threads working through passages of Scripture in a 5-day format. The posts consider general observations about the passage (Monday), structure (Tuesday), and meaning—the one-sentence idea of the author’s combined words, structure, theology, and tone of the passage, aka “Big Idea” in preaching and “Author’s Intended Meaning” in hermeneutics (Wednesday).
Moving toward application of the passage, the posts explore some canonical and epochal considerations before the reader as one seeks the significance of the ancient text for the contemporary believer (Thursday). The epochal considerations follow Vosian ideas, but could not be classified as covenantal (or dispensational). They only recognize the dawning of the Messianic Age influences how we read passages; the death and resurrection of Christ influences how we read the OT and relates to every aspect of how one read the NT. Maybe one might call such considerations Augustinian.
Finally, I suggest an application or two of the passage (Friday). I began in Psalm 60 (together with 108) and have continued through the Psalms consecutively. I worked through Psalm 65 this week.
The goal of the posts is to give preachers, teachers, and readers of passages of Scripture the foundation for preparing to teach from the passage the weekend after the five days. Think of the posts as a starter-kit for the passage, as sermon-fodder, or as a weekly mini-course on interpreting a passage of Scripture. The posts do not do all the work for the instructor; they only seek to give a sound interpretation with reasoning, and a basic structure of each passage. The instructor must take these seeds and make the sermon, small-group study, Sunday School lesson, or devotional talk. But the basics are there. I hope especially to help preachers and teachers with limited time to study and/or less formal training in hermeneutics to preach and teach what the Lord has said in his text through the human authors. I also hope to help all readers of Scripture better understand and apply the word of God.Invite someone you know to the weekly studies! Especially invite preaching and teaching friends to observe a means of working through passages of Scripture.
I am trying to use my Threads account solely to help the church interpret Scripture. I am hoping to make brief posts Monday-Friday. But I have started with long threads on a comparison of Psalm 60 to Psalm 108. I hope the posts will be of great blessings to readers in many arenas: personal study, devotions, classroom lesson prep, and preaching prep. I will attempt to move through the process of recognition, exegesis, application, and some validation over the course of the week so that enough material would be available on each passage for you to quickly turn it into a study lesson or sermon for the weekend; (the hermeneutical process above follows Elliott Johnson). Your feedback on Threads is appreciated, even though I do not intend to respond to all of them and become trapped in social media Shanghai Tunnels.
If you believe in the inspiration and inerrancy of the Scriptures, removing a book from the canon is out of the question. Taking away one of the sixty-six books would delete the voice of God speaking to us through the excised book.
Yet there are many books that believers skip or ignore in their annual or perennial reading of the Bible. In effect, repeatedly skipping a book as if it is not in the canon is doing the same thing as taking scissors (or SELECT ALL + DELETE) to a portion of the Scriptures. Practically speaking, skipping a book says either that one does not need that book to live out all that the Lord commands, or maybe even that one questions whether God has spoken his will through that book. Or, positively speaking, we need to read the entirety of the Scriptures, repeatedly (annually, bi-annually, or tri-annually) so that we might hear the Lord speak his will to us on all things. We need the whole counsel of God to shape us into Christ.
So do not skip Judges or Ruth! Make them part of your regular diet of Scripture reading. There is so much great stuff God has willed for us in these books that record some of Israel’s early experiences in the Promised Land. The Judges-Ruth commentary is written to help you hear God speak through each of the books’ twenty-five chapters. Below I provide a screenshot of the opening page of the commentary of Judges 5 in an effort to entice you to read Judges with the commentary.
Have you ever considered what Deborah’s military leadership, Jephthah’s sacrifice of his daughter, or Samson’s eyes being gouged out teaches us about living a life of joyous obedience before Christ? Or, when Ruth secretly lies down next to Boaz, what does that reveal about Jesus’s redemptive love for us?
My new commentary,Exalting Jesus inJudges and Ruthwill be available in a couple of weeks! Like my previous commentary on Jonah in the Christ-Centered Exposition series, this commentary intends to be readable, understandable, and practical for everyone. In writing this commentary, I attempt to be engaging, clear, and relevant without going beyond the boundaries of the author’s subject in a passage. My intent is for readers to be able to understand Judges and Ruth as whole books and to understand each individual chapter within these books. The commentary should help each reader see the importance of these stories to living a life that pleases the Lord.
Each chapter has a simple format:
Main Idea and Outline: Every chapter opens with one complete sentence that expresses the main idea of the Biblical writer. This helps the reader make sense of the passage in question. Then the outline reflects the main idea in the flow of the passage.
Exposition: The exposition is commentary that explains the meaning of the passage and its verses. It includes illustrations or stories to further clarify the explanations. It reads like hearing a readily graspable sermon, with the depth focusing on obedience to the passage. The exposition points the reader to Jesus and his gospel in each passage.
Study Questions and Application: Between chapters 9-11 individual study questions and/or personal applications follow the exposition. I have tried to take the guesswork out of the initial application of each passage. I hope very reader will find this commentary to be one of the most practical guides through Scripture you ever have encountered! Purchase a copy for your devotions, personal study, small group, Bible study, Sunday School class, and/or sermon preparation. For more to come on the book, find me on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Southeastern Theological Review 13.2 has published my essay, “The Use of Psalm 68 in Ephesians 4: A Typological Approach Toward a Solution.” Many thanks go to the journal’s editor, Dr. Ben Merkle, and his team, for making my work available. I hope you will enjoy the article and subscribe to digital alerts for the journal.
Moody Publishers created an Author’s Page to go with Say It! On the page, I answer a handful of questions, including, “What are some core values that are embodied in Black churches and preaching?” They also recently changed the page for Say It! to include the recognition of the book’s awards.
I listened to a sermon preached this weekend at a large evangelical church in the suburbs of Chicago. It was not my own church, nor was the speaker an elder or member of the pastoral staff of our church. The congregation and their edifice were much larger and much more suburban than my own assembly. I had high expectations based on the size of the church, for I hoped that the word of God was drawing people to the thousands of seats in this sanctuary. However, I could not have been more disappointed in what I heard. I will not mention the passage or church so as to hide the identity of the speaker in my brief review. First, the person preaching totally missed the Big Idea of the passage — the main idea, the central idea —and substituted his own. His own idea was clever and drew from the personal significance of the textual words in English rather than from the meaning of the combined words, structure, theology, and tone of the text.
That preacher’s struggle to find the central idea in this narrative passage reminded me of the great importance of my task in teaching hermeneutics to my students: We must discern what God has said through the human author and not communicate our own extrinsic idea as the main idea. We are not preaching God’s words if we are not communicating his main idea through the author, no matter how clever, creative, or cool our idea sounds.
Second, for a theological issue in the passage he did not understand, the preacher attempted to explain it by means of an analogy. It was a good attempt, but it showed little concern for his people’s need for a correct theological understanding. It would have been good for him to give more thought and study to the issue and present accurate theology to those he served. Who knows if his listeners ever will have this theological error corrected even as they attempt to build their lives and theological knowledge on the error?
Third, the preacher ignored the issue of nationalism that was part of the meaning of the passage. On a particular point of application, he expressed agreement with striving for “social justice” (even though what he described was not social justice but social service; the wrong identity reinforces false ideas about social justice). He followed his expression by saying that the gospel is a proclamation not simply a demonstration.
Sigh.
Was that false distinction even necessary?
Apparently, it was necessary based on his audience’s response, for he received a hearty “Amen!” from many people. He could not hide that he was playing to the sentiments of the membership rather than applying what the biblical text means.
Again, the preacher skipped the nationalistic thrust of the passage, misspoke about social justice, and then separated the so-called “gospel” from serving people socially. I was witnessing the soft reinforcing of Christian nationalism or at least the ignoring of it. It is no wonder so many evangelicals are not confronted on sins related to their preferred political ideologies if this preaching is representative of the typical evangelical pulpit, which I fear it is. I should not have been surprised, though, since there was an American flag posted in the sanctuary.
I was thankful that the preacher later explained the gospel in a succinct form. He preached the wrath of God as God’s just judgment against sin. He exalted Christ’s death and resurrection as God’s solution for sin and wrath. He challenged the listeners to repent and trust Christ. Christ was preached, and for this I rejoiced!
Still, I am sad for that congregation. I am sad over a preacher who substituted his own idea for God’s idea in the passage, over a congregation that received that message as the word of God, and over the missed opportunity to challenge believers to pursue God-glorifying life-change based on God’s meaning in the passage. There were several other misgivings in the preaching of this passage, including the building of a point of application from an admittedly speculative interpretation by some scholars. However, the three aforementioned concerns stood out as most significant.
Finally, may I encourage believers in the pews to remove any and all expectations for the preacher to make you feel good about your faith, to say what is familiar or agreeable, to affirm your values or political views, or to make sure you leave the worship service without critical spiritual and theological challenge? It is not the preacher’s job to do anything other than preach the word of God in love with a view toward calling all hearers to the obedience of faith. The preacher I heard gave the evangelical form of scratching itchy ears, making people laugh at jokes and nod at error cloaked as Theology Lite. As preachers, our calling is to herald the gospel and all of its implications for living life before our Savior and King. We have one grand opportunity to do so each week. We need to be the best stewards possible over that calling and not send people away in disobedience or ignorance but with smiles on their faces. The gospel also is education, not job-preservation.
Instead, members should expect to leave the preaching event with a robust sense of conviction, correction, instruction, humility, hope, anticipation, and celebration of Christ. We should walk away feeling the gravity, grace, and gladness of having met with God and heard his voice.
I had a brief social media exchange with people I do not know about a well known preacher’s expositions of Scripture. I remarked that the preacher in question is a highly competent expositor of NT Letters – which, if trained in evangelical academies that affirm inerrancy, is almost a given. (As Jonathan Pennington says, “For Protestants, especially evangelicals, especially Reformed, doctrine-oriented ones, we love Paul. Give us Romans and thirteen years to preach through it phrase by phrase, and we will be in heaven!” [Reading the Gospels Wisely, Baker Academic, 2012], 37.) However, I also mentioned that the same preacher is not a competent expositor of NT Gospels and Acts, or the OT. I made no comment on the person’s abilities with the book of Revelation because I did not want a debate over views of interpreting the Apocalypse.
The comments related to the NT Letters and the other biblical literature recognizes that many expositors use hermeneutics intended for NT Letters to interpret the Fourfold Gospel, Acts, Revelation, and the OT. When they do so, they yield sermons that do not respect the biblical writer’s combined theology, structure, tone, and argument even if they might respect the use of the original languages. Yet even that respect for the languages is only to a certain degree if one does not place the grammar and syntax of the language back into the structured theological content of the passage’s tone and flow of the argument of the words.
Expositional preaching takes the biblical author’s central idea in a passage and communicates that idea to a contemporary audience, while respecting the biblical author’s language, structure, theology, tone, and argument. To do otherwise in preaching is not exposition, even if one is a highly respected expositor of the NT Letters.
For example, the subject of Judges 13 is, “Manoah’s increasing understanding of the identity of the Angel of the Lord in the revelation of the child to be born to his barren wife.” While there are typology and echo related to the child to be born, the passage moves from Manoah’s ignorance related to the words of the Angel to Manaoah and his nameless wife bowing in worship before the Angel as the Angel reveals his divine identity. If one preaches a sermon on Judges 13 without the above subject being the central idea behind the homiletical idea, the sermon will not be an exposition of this passage no matter how well studied, crafted, and delivered.
A good adage to insert here might be the one that begins, “If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck….” However, having moved to Chicago, I have noticed how many people identify Canadian Geese as ducks.
Although our methods differ ever so slightly, I highly respect the work of David Helm and what his team at Charles Simeon Trust is doing to train preachers to give expositions of Scripture in various genres according to the conventions of the genre. Tony Merida and his team of writers are doing the same in the Christ-Centered Exposition series; (see this resource too). Also, if one is looking to approach the exposition of 1 and 2 Chronicles, some helps are offered here, there, and there.
Calvary Memorial Church has posted three of my recent sermons on Acts 4-5, 9, and 10. The Big Idea of each of these passages is somewhat unexpected. I am grateful for the roles of the Cyprusian Levite and the tanner by the sea in the narratives. I look forward to rejoicing with them in Christ’s kingdom.
Preaching Source blog graciously published a small piece I wrote on the application of biblical narrative. The word count limitation does not allow for other items I include in my classroom lectures on application. However, I hope this small piece gets us thinking about individual narratives within the larger canonical narrative.
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