My father and I were discussing the pro's/con's of Topical versus Exegetical preaching. My father was lamenting the lack of exegetical preaching coming from the pulpit at his home church. Obviously, once one deviates from the proper form of exegesis the chances for a message full of fluff, personal ideas and heretical philosophies increase exponentially.
However, just because a message is topical in origin doesn't mean it is necessarily based on a false or personal pretense. A proper understanding of theology comes from seeing God's theme of redemption from the book of Genesis interwoven through all the books of the Bible to Revelation. Therefore a proper understanding of any one particular scripture is seen best as a part of the larger theme of God's picture revealed through the whole Bible.
As long as a preacher is well-versed and knowledgeable of all the elements of "the big picture" and has a solid biblical foundation for his personal beliefs and theology, he can safely draw on a larger resource of knowledge revealed through scriptures as a whole and even personal experience. It is when preachers do not have this biblical foundation for their personal beliefs and theology that things start to get messy... not counting improper motives for whatever topic he or she may choose to preach on in the first place.
All things considered, my father and I agreed that we would both appreciate and prefer exegetical preaching from our pulpits as a norm instead of a random occurance.
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2 comments:
To me, the difference is between systematic and biblical theology...many people use systematic theology, in the categorized sense that we're so used to in Western Christianity. We look up the word "faith" in our concordance, find it in several different books, and draw conclusions about what it means in all contexts.
What I love about biblical theology is that it takes each book or writer, one at a time, and studies each in depth. So the preacher would look at the historical and political context when Luke wrote, who he was writing to, what his own background was, what his agendas in writing might be, etc., and THEN look at what faith means in his writings. Of course this takes much more energy than looking it up in the concordance, but it's SO worth it.
So to me it's not about topical or exegetical preaching--I can definitely get a lot out of topical preaching from a biblical theologian, because again, she has done her homework and understands the concepts behind the scriptures she's quoting or using to support her thesis. I personally think they both have their places, but out of the two I prefer exegetical preaching as well, provided the preacher weaves in lessons and application from the rest of the Bible, too.
In my opinion, the superiority of expository preaching is that the point of the sermon is the point of the Scripture passage. So topical preaching is fine with me, as long as the Scripture is handled in this way- as a fine instrument, and not a brute tool. When it is evident that the preacher is not even attempting to answer the question: "What is the point this phrase pr sentence or paragraph is making?" I become disinterested at best, and frustrated and angry at worst.
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