“This is surely what Paul meant when he told Timothy to be ‘a workman who has not need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth’ (2 Tim. 2:15). The verb, orthotomounta, means literally ‘cutting straight’. It was employed of road making and is, for instance, used in the LXX of Proverbs 3:6: ‘He will make straight . . . your paths’. Our exposition of Scripture is to be so simply and direct, so easily intelligible, that it resembles a straight road. It is easy to follow it. It is like Isaiah’s highway of the redeemed: even ‘fools shall not err therein’ (Is. 35:8). Such straight cutting of the Word of God is not easy. It requires much study, as we shall see later, not only of God’s Word but of man’s nature of the world in which he lives. The expository preacher is a bridge builder, seeking to span the gulf between the Word of God and the mind of man. He must do his utmost to interpret the Scripture so accurately and plainly, and to apply it so forcefully, that the truth crosses the bridge” (John Stott, The Preacher’s Portrait, p. 28).
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