Expository Quotes

Bookish people, who are often maladroit people, persist in thinking they can master any subtlety so long as it's been shaped into acceptable expository prose.

This is what you do now to give your day topography--scan the boxes, read the news, see the chain of your friends reporting about themselves, take the 140-character expository bursts and sift through for the information you need. It's a highly deceptive world, one that constantly asks you to comment but doesn't really care what you have to say. The illusion of participation can sometimes lead to participation. But more often than not, it only leads to more illusion, dressed in the guise of reality.

When most Christians think apologetics training, they think philosophy, logic, and debate. However, the key tools for training the expository apologist are creeds, confessions and catechisms.

Expository preaching consists in the explanation and application of a passage of Scripture. Without explanation it is not expository; without application it is not preaching."32

If you've spent any time trolling the blogosphere, you've probably noticed a peculiar literary trend: the pervasive habit of writers inexplicably placing exclamation points at the end of otherwise unremarkable sentences. Sort of like this! This is done to suggest an ironic detachment from the writing of an expository sentence! It's supposed to signify that the writer is self-aware! And this is idiotic. It's the saddest kind of failure. F. Scott Fitzgerald believed inserting exclamation points was the literary equivalent of an author laughing at his own jokes, but that's not the case in the modern age; now, the exclamation point signifies creative confusion. All it illustrates is that even the writer can't tell if what they're creating is supposed to be meaningful, frivolous, or cruel. It's an attempt to insert humor where none exists, on the off chance that a potential reader will only be pleased if they suspect they're being entertained. Of course, the reader isn't really sure, either. They just want to know when they're supposed to pretend to be amused. All those extraneous exclamation points are like little splatters of canned laughter: They represent the "form of funny," which is more easily understood (and more easily constructed) than authentic funniness.

Holiness does not consist in mystic speculations, enthusiastic fervours, or uncommanded austerities; it consists in thinking as God thinks, and willing as God wills.

Christ's death is the Christian's life. Christ's cross is the Christian's title to heaven. Christ "lifted up" and put to shame on Calvary is the ladder by which Christians "enter into the holiest," and are at length landed in glory.

A good expository paper will benefit far more people than most research papers. A good text is worth a thousand of the usual trifles that appear in research journals.

Topical preaching, polemical preaching, historical preaching, and other forms of sermonic output have, one supposes, their rightful and opportune uses. But expository preaching—the prayerful expounding of the Word of God is preaching that is preaching—pulpit effort par excellence.

The expository preacher is not one who 'shares his studies' with others, he is an ambassador and a messenger authoritatively delivering the Word of God to men.

We can never hear too much about Jesus Christ.

The love of Christ to sinners is the very essence and marrow of the Gospel.

how true it is that the rulers of this world are seldom friendly to the cause of God.

Pride is the oldest and commonest of sins. Humility is the rarest and most beautiful of graces.

The key to preaching, then, is to make the message of the text obvious. Help people to see it and feel it. Help people to understand the text. Paul is talking about what I would call ‘expository preaching’, in which the message of the text is the message of the sermon.

Be clear! Be clear! Be clear!” Clarity does not come easily. When we train to be expositors, we probably spend three or four years in seminary. While that training prepares us to be theologians, it sometimes gets in our way as communicators. Theological jargon, abstract thinking, or scholars’ questions become part of the intellectual baggage that hinders preachers from speaking clearly to ordinary men and women.

This is what you do now to give your day topography—scan the boxes, read the news, see the chain of your friends reporting about themselves, take the 140-character expository bursts and sift through for the information you need. It’s a highly deceptive world, one that constantly asks you to comment but doesn’t really care what you have to say. The illusion of participation can sometimes lead to participation. But more often than not, it only leads to more illusion, dressed in the guise of reality.

October 16, 2009 Avengers Paintball, Inc. 1778 Industrial Blvd. Lakeville, MN 55044 Esteemed Avengers, This letter recommends Mr. Allen Trent for a position at your paintball emporium. Mr. Trent received a C– in my expository writing class last spring, which—given my newly streamlined and increasingly generous grading criteria—is quite the accomplishment. His final project consisted of a ten-page autobiographical essay on the topic of his own rageful impulses and his (often futile) attempts to control them. He cited his dentist and his roommate as primary sources. Consider this missive a testament to Mr. Trent’s preparedness for the work your place of business undoubtedly has in store. Hoping to maintain a distance of at least one hundred yards, Jason T. Fitger Professor of Creative Writing and English Payne University (“Teach ’til It Hurts”)

people need to be reminded as much as they need to be informed.

The purpose behind each individual sermon is to secure some moral action. We need to know what that action is.

Expository preaching is the best method for displaying and conveying your conviction that the whole Bible is true.

There’s another trouble with meaning. We’ve been taught to believe it comes near the end. As if the job of all those sentences were to ferry us along to the place where meaning is enacted—to “the point,” Just before the conclusion, Which restates “the point.” This is especially true in the school model of writing. Remember the papers you wrote? Trying to save that one good idea till the very end? Hoping to create the illusion that it followed logically from the previous paragraphs? You were stalling until you had ten pages. Much of what’s taught under the name of expository writing could be called “The Anxiety of Sequence.” Its premise is this: To get where you’re going, you have to begin in just the right place And take the proper path, Which depends on knowing where you plan to conclude. This is like not knowing where to begin a journey Until you decide where you want it to end. Begin in the wrong place, make the wrong turn, And there’s no getting where you want to go. Why not begin where you already are?

A “neurobiological” or “genetic” or “developmental” explanation for a behavior is just shorthand, an expository convenience for temporarily approaching the whole multifactorial arc from a particular perspective.

My stories are malevolently anti-narrative, and my essays are maliciously anti-expository, but the ideology of my opposition arrived long after my antagonism had become a trait of character." -- William H. Gass, "Finding a Form

There is something else to remember: each point should be a declarative sentence, not a question. Questions do not show relationships because they are not ideas. The points in your outline should answer questions, not raise them.

It is desperately essential in this hour that preachers recover a soaring vision of the supremacy of God. Life-changing, history-altering preaching will come only when pastors reclaim a high view of God's blazing holiness and are overshadowed by His absolute sovereignty. Towering thoughts of God's transcendent glory must captivate preachers' souls.

One reason why fiction is a human necessity is that it satisfies many unconscious as well as conscious needs. It would be important if it only touched the conscious mind, as expository writing does. But fiction is important, too, because it teaches the unconscious.

THERE HAS BEEN A SILENT DIVORCE IN THE CHURCH, SPEAKING generally, between the Word and the Spirit. When there is a divorce, sometimes the children stay with the mother, sometimes with the father. In this divorce you have those on the Word side and those on the Spirit side. What is the difference? Those on the Word side stress earnestly contending for the faith once delivered to the saints, expository preaching, sound theology, rediscovering the doctrines of the Reformation—justification by faith, sovereignty of God. Until we get back to the Word, the honor of God’s name will not be restored. What is wrong with this emphasis? Nothing. It is exactly right, in my opinion. Those on the Spirit side stress getting back to the Book of Acts, signs, wonders, and miracles, gifts of the Holy Spirit—with places being shaken at prayer meetings, get in Peter’s shadow and you are healed, lie to the Holy Spirit and you are struck dead. Until we recover the power of the Spirit, the honor of God’s name will not be restored. What is wrong with this emphasis? Nothing. It is exactly right, in my opinion. The problem is, neither will learn from the other. But if these two would come together, the simultaneous combination would mean spontaneous combustion. And if Smith Wigglesworth’s prophecy got it right, the world will be turned upside down again.

No other style of preaching can so completely guarantee immunity from an indulgence in special crochets and fads. The Bible is an exceedingly broad book in its treatment of life and, he who successfully preaches through, even one small section of it, will find a variety of subjects and principles and lessons--so great a variety that if he is fair with all he will be saved from the error of over-emphasis and of neglecting certain broad tracts of truth.

In this age of darkness, we who are saints are said to be shining as luminaries which shine in the night.

Success in the pulpit can be the force that leads a preacher from prayerful dependence on the Spirit.

Our preaching should reflect the uniqueness of our personalities, but our lives should

Every sermon should have a theme, and that theme should be the theme of the portion of Scripture on which it is based.

I have a conviction that no sermon is ready for preaching, not ready for writing out, until we can express its theme in a short, pregnant sentence as clear as a crystal.

John Calvin said he constantly “studied to be simple.

Restatement is like marching in place. It does not have forward movement, but it is part of the parade. It is saying the same thing in different words.

A preacher may proclaim the grace of God with glorious orthodoxy, but if his life contradicts his doctrine he will disgrace the gospel of Christ (1 Tim 3:7).

One thief was saved that no sinner might despair, but only one, that no sinner might presume.

What God has to say to man is infinitely more important than what man has to say to God.

The purpose behind all doctrine is to secure moral action.

Teaching English is (as professorial jobs go) unusually labor-intensive and draining. To do it well, you have to spend a lot of time coaching students individually on their writing and thinking. Strangely enough, I still had a lot of energy for this student-oriented part of the job. Rather, it was _books_ that no longer interested me, drama and fiction in particular. It was as though a priest, in midcareer, had come to doubt the reality of transubstantiation. I could still engage with poems and expository prose, but most fiction seemed the product of extremities I no longer wished to visit. So many years of Zen training had reiterated, 'Don't get lost in the drama of life,' and here I had to stand around in a classroom defending Oedipus.

But I would urge that the expository method (understood as that which explains extended passages of Scripture in course) be restored to that equal place which it held in the primitive and Reformed Churches; for, first, this is obviously the only natural and efficient way to do that which is the sole legitimate end of preaching, convey the whole message of God to the people.

o step into the pulpit is to enter onto holy ground. To stand behind an open Bible demands no trifling with sacred things. To be a spokesman for God requires utmost concern and care in handling and proclaiming the Word. Rightly does Scripture warn, "Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness" (James 3:1).

This means if you want to receive God’s blessing, you do not need to go looking for some dramatic new experience. The place to be is your local church, where the word is proclaimed and the sacraments are administered. You simply need to read your Bible, listen to expository preaching week by week, and participate in the Lord’s Supper. This is where God’s grace to us in Christ is found.

Our hearts are weak. Our sins are many. We need a Redeemer who is able to save to the uttermost and deliver from the wrath to come. We have such a Redeemer in Jesus Christ. He is the Mighty God (Isaiah 9:6).

Evangelism, instead of being a normal part of careful and regular expository preaching, with the twin effect on the consciences of the unconverted and on the growth in grace of Christians, becomes a special, dramatic activity. This leads to an orientation of church life away from Scripture, and as scriptural and non-scriptural duties become confused, the main duties which God requires of Christians and ministers are overshadowed.

Christians are Christ’s body, the organism through which He works. Every addition to that body enables Him to do more. If you want to help those outside, you must add your own little cell to the body of Christ who alone can help them.

In his book Real Presences, George Steiner asks us to "imagine a society in which all talk about the arts, music and literature is prohibited." In such a society there would be no more essays on whether Hamlet was mad or only pretending to be, no reviews of the latest exhibitions or novels, no profiles of writers or artists. There would be no secondary, or parasitic, discussion - let alone tertiary: commentary on commentary. We would have, instead, a "republic for writers and readers" with no cushion of professional opinion-makers to come between creators and audience. While the Sunday papers presently serve as a substitute for the experiencing of the actual exhibition or book, in Steiner's imagined republic the review pages would be turned into listings:catalogues and guides to what is about to open, be published, or be released. What would this republic be like? Would the arts suffer from the obliteration of this ozone of comment? Certainly not, says Steiner, for each performance of a Mahler symphony is also a critique of that symphony. Unlike the reviewer, however, the performer "invests his own being in the process of interpretation." Such interpretation is automatically responsible because the performer is answerable to the work in a way that even the most scrupulous reviewer is not. Although, most obviously, it is not only the case for drama and music; all art is also criticism. This is most clearly so when a writer or composer quotes or reworks material from another writer or composer. All literature, music, and art "embody an expository reflection which they pertain". In other words it is not only in their letters, essays, or conversation that writers like Henry James reveal themselves also to be the best critics; rather, The Portrait of a Lady is itself, among other things, a commentary on and a critique of Middlemarch. "The best readings of art are art." No sooner has Steiner summoned this imaginary republic into existence than he sighs, "The fantasy I have sketched is only that." Well, it is not. It is a real place and for much of the century it has provided a global home for millions of people. It is a republic with a simple name: jazz.

There are not different disciplinary buckets. Instead, each one is the end product of all the biological influences that came before it and will influence all the factors that follow it. Thus, it is impossible to conclude that a behavior is caused by a gene, a hormone, a childhood trauma, because the second you invoke one type of explanation, you are de facto invoking them all. No buckets. A “neurobiological” or “genetic” or “developmental” explanation for a behavior is just shorthand, an expository convenience for temporarily approaching the whole multifactorial arc from a particular perspective.

First, what is the vision of God in this particular text? Second, where precisely do I find that in the passage? (The vision of God is always in the specific words and the life situation of the writer or the readers.) Third, what is the function of this vision of God? What implications for belief or behavior did the author draw from the image?

If it really was true that all would sooner or later reach heaven, and hell sooner or later be emptied of inhabitants, it never could be said that it would have been "good for a man not to have been born." Hell itself would lose its terrors, if it had an end. Hell itself would be endurable, if after millions of ages there was a HOPE of freedom and of heaven.

This famine in pulpits across the nation reveals a loss of confidence in God’s Word to perform its sacred work. While evangelicals affirm the inerrancy of Scripture, many have apparently abandoned their belief in its sufficiency to save and to sanctify. Rather than expounding the Word with growing vigor, many are turning to lesser strategies in an effort to resurrect dead ministries. But with each newly added novelty, the straightforward expounding of the Bible is being relegated to a secondary role, further starving the church. Doing God’s work God’s way requires an unwavering commitment to feeding people God’s Word through relentless biblical preaching and teaching.

There are few things, it may be feared, in which Christians come so far short of Christ's example, as they do in the matter of prayer. Our Master's strong crying and tears--His continuing all night in prayer to God--His frequent withdrawal to private places, to hold close communion with the Father, are things more talked of and admired than imitated. We live in an age of hurry, bustle, and so-called activity. Men are tempted continually to cut short their private devotions, and abridge their prayers. When this is the case, we need not wonder that the Church of Christ does little in proportion to its machinery. The Church must learn to copy its Head more closely. Its members must be more in their closets. "We have little," because little is asked. (James 4:2.)            

Where to begin? Write, throw away the first ten or so pages of story, that primed the pump. Use your expository intro as story outline and put in the back or trash. If you can’t answer whether it’s plot or characters which form the story. Stop. Learn that LY is hideous and the bastion of the weak. It’s okay to lift bits and ideas from your reading. Wait until you’ve forgotten the source and you won’t be stalled by fear of derivative. Write your darlings, kill them later

Why did I do that?” Remorse touches us a little deeper causing us to feel disgust and pain (involving both the intellect and the heart), but not causing us to change our ways. True repentance brings in the third aspect of our minds – our will. To truly repent one must have a change of will. “Godly sorrow” is the catalyst that brings us to true repentance. [Warren Wiersbe, Be Reverent, p. 149.] By Carey Dillinger From Expository Files 11.6; June 2004

Wiersbe suggests that a distinction can be made between regret, remorse and repentance. Regret is that activity of the mind (intellect) that causes us to say, “Why did I do that?” Remorse touches us a little deeper causing us to feel disgust and pain (involving both the intellect and the heart), but not causing us to change our ways. True repentance brings in the third aspect of our minds – our will. To truly repent one must have a change of will. “Godly sorrow” is the catalyst that brings us to true repentance. [Warren Wiersbe, Be Reverent, p. 149.] By Carey Dillinger From Expository Files 11.6; June 2004

Thinking is difficult, but it stands as our essential work. Make no mistake about the difficulty of the task. It is often slow, discouraging, overwhelming. But when God calls us to preach, he calls us to love him with our minds. God deserves that kind of love and so do the people to whom we minister.

Bad ideas offer explanations of experience that do not reflect reality. They read into life what is not there. Often we embrace invalid ideas because they have not been clearly stated and therefore cannot be evaluated. In our culture, influenced as it is by mass media, we are bombarded by ridiculous concepts that are deliberately left vague so we will act without thinking.

So in a phrase, preaching is expository exultation. In conclusion, then, the reason that preaching is so essential to the corporate worship of the church is that it is uniquely suited to feed both understanding and feeling. It is uniquely suited to waken seeing God and savoring God. God has ordained that the Word of God come in a form that teaches the mind and reaches the heart.

Awareness of our helplessness and dependence makes us stand in awe before God.

expository writing, the goal of which is to persuade or provide information to the reader. A

Such preaching puts people in immediate contact with the power of the Word. E

Grace-focused ministers recognize the daily repentance that private prayers must include, confess to others the divine aid that grants them the strength of their resolutions, obey God in loving thankfulness for the forgiveness and future Christ supplies, model

As expository preachers, our ultimate goal is not to communicate the value of our opinions, others’ philosophies, or speculative meditations but rather to show how God’s Word discloses his will for those united to him through his Son. Truths of God proclaimed in such a way that people can see that the concepts derive from Scripture and apply to their lives preoccupy the expository preacher’s efforts. Such

Without an ultimate authority for truth, all human striving has no ultimate value, and life itself becomes futile. Modern trends in preaching that deny the authority of the Word6 in the name of intellectual sophistication lead to a despairing subjectivism in which people do what is right in their own eyes—a state whose futility Scripture has clearly articulated (Judg. 21:25). The

The glory of preaching is that God accomplishes his will through it, but we are always humbled and occasionally comforted by the knowledge that he works beyond our human limitations.

Great gifts do not necessarily make for great preaching. The technical excellence of a message may rest on your skills, but the spiritual efficacy of your message resides with God. The

No truth calls louder for pastoral holiness than the link between a preacher’s character and a sermon’s reception. If

On the contrary, we speak as men approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel.

Neglect of prayer signals serious deficiencies in a ministry even if other signs of success have not diminished. We must always remember that popular acclaim is not necessarily the same as spiritual effectiveness. The

the humility appropriate for a fellow sinner, express the courage and authority of one confident of the Savior’s provision, exude the joy of salvation by faith alone, reflect the love that claims their souls, and perform their service without any claim of personal merit.14 Preaching

Writing a personal essay or memoir addresses how a person thinks and behaves in the context of society’s prevailing moral and ethical codes, informal rules, laws, and customs. A self-ethnographer emphasis what he or she considers important regarding how people perceive and categorize the world, their meaning for behavior, how they imagine and explain things, and ascertaining what has meaning for them. Expository writing, a discursive examination of a broad field of subjects, is one method of cohering the dimensions of a person’s emic and etic thoughts and a linked series of memorable events into a unified personal ideology how to live a purposeful life. In cultural anthropology, the emic approach focuses on what people of a local culture think and how they interpret events whereas the etic approach takes a more objective view of how an outsider evaluates the behavior and customs of a culture. Usage of both emic and etic analysis provides the richest description of a cultural or a society in which the personal essayist operates within.

Public ministry true to God’s purposes requires devoted private prayer. We should not expect our words to acquaint others with the power of the Spirit if we have not met with him.

Once preachers start to identify the Context of Reality for a biblical passage, our unspoken expository bans become apparent. By an expository ban I refer to those aspects of reality that we tend to avoid or that are culturally forbidden to mention from the pulpit. Sexuality, emotions, famines, joys, tsunamis, celebrations, dreams, promotions, murders, crime victims, cancer survivors, and injustice are part of everyday life, but we avoid them.

Remember that you’re looking for the author’s ideas. Begin by stating in rough fashion what you think the writer is talking about—that is, his subject. Then try to determine what major assertion(s) the biblical writer is making about the subject, that is, the complement(s). If you cannot state a subject at this point, what is hindering you from doing so? Is there a verse that doesn’t seem to fit? Is the writer assuming a connection between his assertions that you need to state? Is it that you can’t figure out how this paragraph relates to what precedes or follows it? Is there an image the author uses that you don’t understand?

Is this true? Do I really believe it?” What needs to be proved? Is the author arguing, proving, or defending at length some concept that your hearers would probably accept—for example, that Jesus was human, or that Christians don’t have to be circumcised? Is the author arguing, proving, or defending a concept that your listeners may not readily accept, and therefore they need to understand the argument of the passage—for instance, that slaves were to be obedient to their masters? Is the author assuming the validity of an idea that your listeners may not accept right away? Do they need to be convinced that what the passage asserts is actually the case—for instance, that Jesus is the only way to God, or that demons actually exist?

In your sermon manuscript short sentences keep your thoughts from tangling and therefore are easier for you to remember. When you deliver your sermon, you will not concern yourself at all with sentence length, just as you do not think about commas, periods, or exclamation points. As you preach, your words tumble out in long, short, or even broken sentences, punctuated by pauses, vocal slides, and variations in pitch, rate, and force. Short sentences in your manuscript serve your mind; they have little to do with your delivery.

An effective introduction should accomplish three objectives. It gets attention, it surfaces a need, and it orients the audience to the body of the sermon. I tried to do that. (You can judge whether I was successful.)

What does this mean?” What has to be explained so that my listeners will understand the passage? Does the biblical writer explain his statements or define his terms? Does he assume that the original readers understood him and needed no explanation? Are there concepts, terms, or connections that modern listeners might not understand that you need to explain to them?

Here is another thing that used to puzzle me. Is it not frightfully unfair that this new life should be confined to people who have heard of Christ and been able to believe in Him? But the truth is God has not told us what His arrangements about the other people are. We do know that no man can be saved except through Christ; we do not know that only those who know about Him can be saved through Him. But in the meantime, if you worried about the people outside, the most unreasonable thing you can do is to remain outside yourself. Christians are Christ’s body, the organism through which He works. Every addition to that body enables Him to do more. If you want to help those outside, you must add your own little cell to the body of Christ who alone can help them. Cutting off a man’s fingers would be an odd way of getting him to do more work.5

Merely to ask, “Is that true? Do I and my hearers believe that?” does not produce instant answers. But failing to contend with those basic questions means we will speak only to those who are already committed.

State the idea so that it focuses on response. How do you want your listeners to respond? Instead of “You can rejoice in trials because they lead to maturity,” try “Rejoice when hard times come.” If you know what your listeners should do, tell them. State the idea so that your listeners sense you are talking to them about them.

The unique contribution of Bible exposition is its substantial enhancement of the listeners' comprehension of Scripture's intent. Those who listen to expository preaching have opportunity to submit to the Holy Spirit who first inspired the text as He now illumines that text to them. This is the best avenue for building up the saints. The New Testament puts heavy emphasis on using the mind as the principal avenue to Christian growth (for example, Rom. 12:2; 1 Pet. 1:13), so the preacher should do the same.

A sound study-library must be a top priority. For many, such a library has been unimportant and the result has been an impoverished ministry, lacking depth, breadth, and stimulation. An excellent library is constructed by deliberate acquisition rather than “accidental” accumulation. Since an expository preacher's library is an integral part of his pulpit work, it should be assembled with an eye toward the highest quality.4 A preliminary indication of what a core library is not will help understand what it should be: 1. It is not a collection of inferior books donated to the preacher by well-meaning friends and listeners. 2. It is not an accumulation of books offered on sale or at discount prices. 3. It is not simply a collection of materials that are highly recommended or found on standard lists of bibliographies.

Nowhere is that discipline and hard work more demanding and rewarding than in determining the central idea and structure of a passage. In this brief discussion only a few basic ideas can be developed, but if these are followed, they will cause the form of the sermon to reflect the essence of the passage and that is legitimate expository preaching.

The essential ingredient in dealing with central ideas, outlines, and titles in expository preaching is an understanding of the structure of the passage to be preached. The expositor should not communicate his own central idea, nor his own outline, nor his own title. He is, rather, to teach the central idea, outline, and theme of the author. Failure to reflect the author's theme, outline, and central idea is a departure from true exposition.

Fruitful expository preaching demands great effort. Since nothing is as important as the Word, no energy expended by anyone in any other field should even equal the effort of an expositor seeking to “rightly divide the Word.” Adams identifies the number-one reason for poor preaching: I have had the opportunity to hear much preaching over the last few years, some very good, some mediocre, most very bad. What is the problem with preaching? There is no one problem, of course. . . . But if there is one thing that stands out most, perhaps it is the problem I mention today. What I am about to say may not strike you as being as specific as other things I have written, yet I believe it is at the bottom of a number of other difficulties. My point is that good preaching demands hard work. From listening to sermons and from talking to hundreds of preachers about preaching, I am convinced that the basic reason for poor preaching is the failure to spend adequate time and energy in preparation. Many preachers—perhaps most—simply don't work long enough on their sermons.

the prayer of many of us is that God would raise up a generation of expository evangelists; preachers who understand biblical exposition in missional terms; preachers whose hearts burst with love for sinners; preachers who no longer dismiss biblical exposition when they think of engaging culture; preachers who no longer expound the Bible with disregard for the unchurched people around them.

While it takes three years or more to get through seminary, it can take you ten years to get over it.

When the heart is far from God, worship is vain, empty, and nonexistent, no matter how proper the forms are. The experience of the heart is the defining, vital, indispensable essence of worship.

Men may be born in dark places of the earth, like these wise men, and yet like them be made "wise unto salvation.

As a prose mode of expository writing, the narrative approach, more than any other, offers writers a chance to think and write about their personal history and cultural identity. A personal narrative process that constructs memories in thematic sequences represents the fundamental nature of the self.

Lincoln-Douglas debates may be described as expository

And it shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, and he will save us: this is the Lord; we have waited for him, we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation (verse 9). One can imagine something of the exultant joy of the remnant as they look upon the once-despised Jesus and see in Him the God of their fathers

All who do not repent shall be consumed together by the fierce anger of Jehovah as a withered oak, a waterless garden, and as tow to which the Lord shall apply the spark. Nor have the words of this section a voice for the Jew alone. They are also written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the ages have arrived. The failure of the professing Church has been even greater than that of Jerusalem, because of the greater light against which we have sinned. Soon must the Holy and the True, disgusted with such corruption, vomit out of His mouth all that is unreal and opposed to His Word. But He stands knocking at the door, and whenever there is reality and a heart for Himself, He will come in and sup there in hallowed, blest communion, though the doom of guilty Christendom is so near. Chapter Two Zion’s Future Glory The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.

Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44). This is to show the mind of Christ. This is the right way to heap coals of fire on an enemy’s head and to melt foes into friends (Romans 12:20).

The poorest Englishman who understands his Bible knows more about religion than the wisest philosophers of Greece and Rome.

Oh, it might not be perfect. It might be a bit redundant, or resort to the occasional expository infodump. But even real people do that, don’t they?

Se você não tem como prever o comportamento dos mercados, precisa aprender a prever e controlar o seu próprio.

Biblical preaching is exposing the mind of God, as revealed in the Word of God, to the people of God, for the glory of God