Pastor Bob O’Bannon
Among different church traditions, there are many approaches to organizing sermons – some follow the church calendar, or lectionary; others rely mostly on topical series (marriage, spiritual warfare, money); and some even look for a text or topic spontaneously from week to week. In the reformed tradition, it is customary to preach consecutively through books of the Bible (sometimes called “expository preaching”), which is what we will be doing May 15 as we begin a series on the Gospel of Mark.
So, why do we do this? What are the advantages of preaching consecutively, chapter after chapter, all the way through a book of the Bible? There are five reasons:
Because all of God’s word is inspired. It’s tempting for us to receive only certain portions of the Bible as inspired, because we find them personally inspiring or helpful, but according to 2 Timothy 3:16, “All Scripture is breathed out by God . . .” Those obscure books and verses that we tend to overlook or ignore are actually inspired by God to train us in righteousness. Preaching through books of the Bible will expose us to these neglected portions of God’s word.
Because some parts of God’s word are difficult. Not only is it easy to gravitate toward the passages we like, we can also gravitate away from passages we don’t like – that is, the ones we find difficult, controversial or culturally unacceptable. Expository preaching forces the preacher and the congregation to grapple with issues they might prefer to avoid.
Because pastors can get on hobby horses. Topical sermon series certainly have their place, but one of the potential pitfalls is that a pastor can simply choose the topics he feels strongly about, so that certain issues get belabored in an unbalanced way. But if the pastor preaches through a book of the Bible, he must preach whatever is presented in the next chapter, whether he wants to or not. This contributes to a more healthy balance of topics and issues.
Because sermon listeners can sometimes feel bullied. While it is common and even desirable that people feel great conviction when hearing a sermon (John 16:18, Acts 2:37), it can sometimes occur that a person wonders if the pastor was singling him/her out as a target for a particular point in the message. If the pastor is preaching through a Bible book, however, he can’t be accused of abusing the pulpit. All he’s doing is preaching whatever topic as come up next in the book he’s going through, which is largely out of his control.
Because it’s easier. This maybe sounds selfish on the part of the preacher, but it does help when the text for the next sermon is already chosen, because next Sunday’s text is simply the one that comes after the text you preached last Sunday. There’s also no need for extended cultural and historical background in each sermon, because that was already provided back when the book was introduced at the start of the series.
We don’t believe it’s wrong to follow the church calendar (which we do here at New Life during Good Friday, Easter and Advent/Christmas), or to preach topically from time to time (recently we did a series on prayer). But we do believe the best way to enjoy a balanced diet of Scriptural nourishment is to allow God to speak as entire books of the Bible are weekly proclaimed, so that the whole counsel of God might be declared to God’s people. (Acts 20:27).