1.I 13. Expository Preaching
Expository Preaching.
Without unfolding and commenting upon the ordinary modes of sermonizing, I pass on to say that a much larger use should be made of expository preaching than has been customary in our churches. It is an admirable way of familiarizing the people with the very text of Scripture. There is an authority, which every audience recognizes, in the word of God as delivered in the sacred Scripture, which does not belong to ordinary human teaching. Above all, the Bible is the best example in literature of the admirable mingling of fact, illustration, appeal, argument, poetry, and emotion, not in their artificial forms, but conformably to nature. The Bible is sometimes spoken of as a “revelation” in contradistinction to nature; but this is done by those who degrade nature, and regard it as something low and imperfect.
I regard the Bible as the noblest book of nature that has ever existed in life. Its very power is in that it is an exposition of nature wider and deeper than any that philosophy has attained to; that is one reason why the Bible is found, as philosophy progressively ascertains the truths of nature, to conform to them with singular adaptation; and that is a reason, too, why the Bible becomes more and more powerful as it is better interpreted and its innermost meaning is made clear by the discoveries of men in the great field of natural science. The Bible is like a field in which is hidden gold. Men who have ploughed over and over the surface and raised perishable crops there from have failed to find and secure that very precious ore which is its chief value.
It will surprise one to see what wealth and diversity of topics will come up for illustration in discussion by means of expository preaching. A thousand subtle suggestions and a thousand minute points of human experience not large enough for the elaborate discussion of a sermon, and yet, like the little screws in a watch, indispensable to the right action of the machinery of life can be touched and turned to advantage in expository preaching. There are many topics which, from the excitement of the times and from the prejudice of the people, it would be difficult to discuss topically in the pulpit, yet, taken in the order in which they are found in Sacred Writ, they can be handled with profit, and without danger. The Bible touches all sides of human life and experience, and scriptural exposition gives endless opportunities of hitting folks who need hitting. The squire can hardly stamp out of church for a “ Thus saith the Lord.”
While exegetical and expository preaching have elements in them which attract and satisfy the scholar and the thinker, they, at the same time, by a strange harmony in diversity, have just that disconnectedness and variety of topic in juxtaposition which seem best suited to the wants of uncultivated minds. I know an eminent pastor in Ohio who, probably, never in his life preached any other sermon than an expository one. The Bible in his hands, Sunday after Sunday, was his only sermon. During a lorn? pastorate he went through the Book from beginning to end, and often, and the fruit of his ministry justified his method. It was proverbial that no people were more thoroughly furnished with know ledge, with habits of discrimination in thought, or were more rich in spiritual feeling.