“This was not because Cindi did not know how to handle her cousin Cherie, but rather because her husband was better than she was at deciphering code whenever Cherie was hysterical. And Cherie, on the other end, was speaking something like high-volume Navajo under stress.”
Two Traps
“Exposition identifies the traps we must avoid. The two main pitfalls are forgetfulness and disloyalty. The forgetful expositor loses sight of his text when he follows his own ideas and forgets to follow what the text says. The disloyal expositor appears to stick to his text, but strains and stretches it so that it means something quite different from its original and natural meaning”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 29
Inconvenient When That Happens
“John was mildly irritated, not at Cindi, but with that special kind of vaguely aimed irritation that we for ourselves when in the presence of people who are being correct in our direction.”
And Should Be Interpreted as Such
“The biblical authors were honest men, not deceivers, and they intended their writings to be understood”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 27.
Which Is Pretty Indignant
“The rest of them were about as indignant as a room full of wet cats”
Evangellyfish, p.133
Unspoken Blessings
“And the earth would go around the sun ten entire times before he had finally met Cindi, who, as Puritans go, was as hot as it gets. And, John thought smugly to himself, for those who think that means ‘not very,’ he could write a book, although no Christian publisher would ever touch it. She could make him bleed from both his ears, like some very happy kind of parachute accident. John grinned inside his head.”
Textual Guardians
“The very first qualification for expository preaching is the recognition that we are guardians of a sacred ‘deposit’ of truth (1 Tim. 6:20; 2 Tim. 1:12-14), trustees of the gospel (1 Thess. 2:4), ‘stewards of the mysteries of God’ (1 Cor. 4:1,2 KJV).”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 27
Zoom Out or Zoom In
“The size of the text doesn’t matter, so long as it is from the Bible. What matters is what we do with it”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 26
At Least When She Had Cell Coverage
“When he told Mystic Union about it six months ago, she had come alive. Her eyes had sparkled, just like her crystal earrings that kept her in touch with her two grandmothers, now deceased”
Many Ways to Unpack a Suitcase
In reality, ‘expository’ refers to the content of the sermon rather than its style. To ‘expound’ Scripture means to bring out what is in the text, to reveal it. The expositor opens what seems to be closed, makes plain what is confusing, unravels what is knotted, and unfolds what is tightly packed.”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 25