“That’s not what I meant.” Have you ever heard someone make that statement? Somewhere along the line their thoughts, their ideas, their intent was misconstrued so that others grossly misunderstood what was being said. It can be dangerous, you know. One misplaced word in a text message, one nuanced inflection in the voice, one misinterpreted pause in a conversation and suddenly things are perceived in a way that was never intended.

“That’s not what I meant!” I wonder how often God says that during the preaching hour?

Nothing is more dangerous to the church of Jesus Christ than taking a

The most compelling, heart-stirring messages are those which bring to light the truth of God’s Word in the heart of the hearer. This is the primary task of the expositor: To take biblical truth and communicate it in such a way that the congregation has a clear understanding of the meaning of Scripture.  Such a process will force men to make decisions about their lives in consideration of the truth that has been revealed.  Perhaps there is no more effective way to do this than by using illustrations.

The act of illustrating comes from the Latin word illustrare which literally

The Word of God is comprised of nothing less than…well, words.  The words we read on the pages of Scripture provide the eternal truths needed for this life and the one to come.  Therefore, it is of the utmost importance that the expositor correctly and exhaustively deal with the words, as they are, when they are, and where they are in the canon of Scripture. In his book, Understanding and Applying the Bible, Robert McQuilken states, “Words are the basic building blocks for understanding the meaning of any passage. In seeking the author’s intended meaning, we must consider the

Preaching is technical business.  Like an excavator who searches for treasure, the expositor of Scripture must have the right tools, the right knowledge, the right methods, and the right location.  He doesn’t flippantly and superficially wing his message.  He must be a resilient researcher, a wise wordsmith, a theological thinker, a literary laborer.  He must be a sincere scientist knowing it is his responsibility to figure out how things work scripturally.  Technical business is this deal of preaching.

However, if the business of preaching is only “technical” then the preacher is nothing more than a history teacher, a grammatical expert,