Exposure to the Text

In my last post I stated that expository preaching involves three elements. We are to be exposing people to the text; explaining the meaning of the text; and exhorting people to a proper application of the text.

In this post I want to talk more about what we mean by exposing people to the text. We need for people see that the message is clearly coming straight from the text of Scripture. A simple way to do this is to first read the text which is to be taught. This helps set the context for the message. We will be looking at and examining this particular portion of Scripture. Then, through out the message, we are to continually point people back to the text. In one of my recent preaching labs one of the students did an excellent job of this. He kept saying, "Look back at the text." There was no doubt that his message was coming right out of the text. I liked that.

In our preaching we want to give full exposure to the text of Scripture. Keep in mind, that when we read the Bible, that is the only inspired part of the message. My comments are not inspired. Only the Word of God is.

Another aspect to this is to remember that we are preaching from translations. While we have good English translations of the Bible, they are still translations. To give exposure to the text we must go back to the original languages. That will mean that throughout our message we must refer to the original words. We might need to expand on the translation by suggesting other possible translations which might give a clearer understanding. We need to be careful to not do this in an overly technical way, nor in a way that brings doubt upon our translations. We are simply recognizing that in translation you have to chose a word but sometimes in exposing people to the text, as a part of teaching, we need to give full range to the meaning of a word or phrase.

When people leave a truly expository message there should be no doubt that they have been fully exposed to the words of the Bible. Next time we will talk about the important element of explaining the text.