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Not gathering moss [W]hat meaneth these FAQs? FAQs is an acronym for Frequently Asked Questions. Many websites have a FAQs where they provide answers for general common questions they receive, or that people have about their products and/or services. On ShortThoughts.com, FAQs is a question and answer format for posts and is a play on Paul’s interlocutor style in Romans. The questions are questions I and others have been asked, common questions that people generally have, objections in the form of questions, and statements made by others put into a question.
Question:
Is exposition preaching every verse of a book from beginning to end?
Answer:
No. Exposition of the Bible simply means the explanation of the meaning of any part of the Bible in its original context. An expositional sermon is a sermon where the points made, doctrines preached, or topics addressed come from the original contextual meaning of the parts of the Bible that make up the text of the sermon. An entire Bible book can be preached expositionally, and should be. However, I have certainly heard sermon series through Bible books that were not expositional.
Question:
Is exposition Reformed?
Answer:
No. There is nothing inherently reformed about expositional preaching. The reformers were protesting the Roman Catholic Church and its misuse and abuse of Scripture. They opposed the Church’s false doctrines of salvation, church priesthood, praying for the dead, etc. The reformers returned to a high view of Scripture, which included inerrancy, infallibility, sole authority, and sufficiency. Understanding what the Bible teaches about the Bible led them to return to expositional preaching of the Bible, which was the original Bible preaching from the time of Jesus, the Apostles, and the early churches.
Question:
Isn’t exposition a new trendy way to preach?
Answer:
No. The Young, Restless, Reformed crowd did pick up on exposition as a new and trendy style of preaching. Much of that movement was about being anti and other than the traditional boomer churches. In an effort to be “different” from their fathers’ churches, they were getting somewhat closer to being their grandfathers’ churches. But, as usual with trend chasers, the term exposition, like gospel-centered, was emptied of meaning. You can find many online who claim to be expositional preachers, but their sermons do not actually have any exposition in them. Regardless of how people use the term, exposition is the original Christian preaching, just as John Broadus pointed out.
Question:
Why do people have different definitions for expository preaching?
Answer:
That’s impossible to answer completely. Some definitions may sound different, but are saying the same thing. Some definitions are based only on what someone has heard and not any actual study and knowledge of the subject. The way people define a term is unimportant. The precise meaning of a term is what is important. Especially as preachers, we should be concerned with precision in meaning. That is our life’s work after all. Many preachers get riled up when liberals take the American founding fathers out of context and change the meaning of what they wrote. But on the other hand, they have no trouble doing that to the biblical authors, and some even suggest it’s necessary to do so in order to preach today.
Question:
Isn’t exposition divisive?
Answer:
Yes and no. Yes, it’s divisive because biblical exposition is explaining the meaning of what God inspired in the 66 books of Scripture, and that’s always divisive among those who reject the authority of God’s word and prefer their own opinions and traditions. No, it’s not divisive because exposition is just a word with a precise meaning and preachers are either doing exposition of the Bible or they are not by the precise meaning of the term.
Question:
Should we worry about exposition since the word is not in the Bible?
Answer:
Exposition is in the Bible. Equivalent Greek words are used in several places to refer to the explanation of scriptures (Mark 4:34; Luke 24:27, 31-32; Acts 17:2-3; 18:6; 28:23; 2 Peter 1:20). Jesus and the Apostles opened and expounded the Old Testament scriptures in their preaching. That is exposition.
Question:
Isn’t it impossible to preach like Jesus and Paul because people don’t understand thee’s and thou’s today?
Answer:
(stares exegetically)