The centrality of preaching in the evangelical church must be emphasized. When I talk about preaching, I don’t mean topical preaching that fails to educate the congregation to understand the passage in its biblical context. The sermon must come from exegesis and exposition of the text. In other words, expository preaching is what the church needs in our time. In our culture where the adjectives “instant” and “fast-food” dominate people’s mindset, including Christians, topical preaching seems more appealing, and expository preaching seems boring. Expository preaching deals with the text itself: its syntax, its structure, its historical-cultural-sociological background, etc…Then, we draw implications from the text and apply them into the life of the congregation. There is a process to move from the biblical world to the contemporary world.
Modern listeners are too instant gratified that they have no patience to wait and be engaged in the process. Rather, topical sermon targets the needs of the audience. It applies and speaks to their experiences immediately. From time to time, we pay the price: the church becomes biblical illiterate. The church suffers from living out “biblical” application with no biblical foundation. A house without a strong base can provide protection for a while. But sooner or later, it will crumble. “Are we surprised, then, that the evangelical church in the West is stumbling, that its biblical ignorance is growing and its worldliness is increasing? If the truth of Scripture is not being preached, biblical illiteracy is the outcome.”[1]
[1] David F. Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth-lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), p. 233.
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