John MacArthur’s Grace To You ministry describes its purpose as “unleashing God’s Truth, One verse at a time.” It is often assumed that Expository preaching is about working verse by verse through a text. Certainly, good expository preaching does require that we dig into the detail of the text. However, verse by verse may not be the same as good expository preaching and may in fact distract from the real message of the text.
Here’s an example from MacArthur’s own sermon library. John MacArthur may have preached many excellent sermons but this is arguably not one of them. I would say this, even if I didn’t disagree with his conclusions. Let’s leave aside the horrendous attempt to wrongly caricature his opponents views (A-Millenialists don’t believe that there isn’t a kingdom of Christ, they believe that the 1000 years is non-literal and that history includes both the growth of God’s kingdom and at one and the same time, the growth of evil). What are the problems with his exposition.
Now, to affix our thinking to one great future event which seems to be the most controversial, I want you to think with me about the coming kingdom of Christ, known as the millennial kingdom, because in the twentieth chapter of Revelation, the opening of that chapter, there is reference to the reign and rule of Jesus Christ on the earth which lasts one thousand years; in fact, one thousand is repeated six times in that brief text. That leaves me with the impression that God wants us not to question the length of its duration.
The sentence at the end there is rather peculiar. Why does the repetation of “one thousand years” require us to treat them as literal? It’s worth noting that Revelation is saturated in repeated metaphorical or symbolic terms including numbers.
MacArthur goes on to say:
“God filled the Bible with prophecy and much of it looking to the end. Did God do this but somehow mumble? Did He do it and somehow muddle it so hopelessly that the high ground for Bible students and the high ground for theologians is to recognize the muddle and abandon the perspicuity or the clarity of Scripture on that subject? Is that what God wanted us to do, to look at it and say, “Aw, I can’t figure this out; let’s forget it?” There are whole denominations that are instructed not to teach on the end times.
You would assume that they are confused because the Bible is confusing, and if the Bible is confusing, then God Himself is confused, and so, working hard – and it is often hard work – to understand prophetic passages is needless. In fact, it’s an impossible effort since it doesn’t mean what it says, and you have to sort of allegorize it or spiritualize it and therefore interpretations are myriad; they are as many as interpreters. Why bother?
Notice again the pejorative misrepresentation of other positions. A-milllenialists and come to that post-mills don’t believe that Revelation is unclear or that God mumbles. What they do believe is that to take God at his Word requires that we pay attention to things like genre. Revelation is not merely “prophetic” literature. It belongs to a genre known as “apocalyptic literature.” This style is packed full of symbolic picture language. We can see that multi-headed beats, seals, bowls, horsemen and 144000 saints have symbolic meaning. Good expository preaching pays close attention to the genre.
This also requires good expository preaching to pay attention to context. I’ve frequently noted that people trip over their own feet with millennialism because they focus in on wooden exegesis of a couple of verses and allow that to shape their understanding of the whole book of Revelation rather than allowing the whole book to help us understand those verses.
Finally, this wooden verse by verse approach means we get caught up in a controversy and miss out on the main flow and purpose of the text. Good exegesis/exposition encourages us to look at a whole passage in order to get the logical flow enabling us see what the purpose, meaning and therefore application of the text is. Verse by verse preaching risks obscuring that.
Faithroots 