7 blessings of having consecutive expository preaching as the staple diet for God's people

In his helpful little book “the Priority of Preaching” Christopher Ash provides “7 blessings of having consecutive expository preaching as the staple diet on the menu for the people of God.”  Verse by verse preaching (aka sequential expository preaching) has a number of built in benefits.  

Ash highlights the following 7 benefits:

1) Consecutive Expository Preaching Safeguards God's Agenda Against Being Hijacked by Ours. 

 In biblical ministry I want to get rid of three demons. They are called Relevance, Entertainment, and Immediacy…To preach through a Bible book is to trust that the agenda of God is the right, the deepest, and the best agenda" (pp. 111-12).

2) Consecutive Expository Preaching Makes It Harder For Us to Abuse the Bible by Reading It Out of Context.

Consecutive Bible exposition helps us understand the Bible in its context and therefore understand it correctly, and not to abuse the Word of God by twisting it to mean something other than what God has made it mean" (p. 116). 2 Timothy 2:15.

3) Consecutive Expository Preaching Dilutes the Selectivity of the Preacher. 

This does not mean the pastor should never address a particular need within his unique ministerial context. One need not be slavishly committed to the ‘lectio continua’ method of preaching. We simply need to give God the microphone and trust that 2 Timothy 3:15-17 is really not a typo. If all Scripture is divinely inspired and profitable then our people need to hear the full counsel and revealed will of God.

4) Consecutive Expository Preaching Keeps the Context of the Sermon Fresh and Surprising.

What Does a Good Sermon Cost? The Glad Sacrifice of Christian Preaching

What Does a Good Sermon Cost?  The Glad Sacrifice of Christian Preaching by David Mathis.

The Mondays. Sometimes they even creep into Sunday nights.

Various physical, emotional, and even spiritual letdowns often follow pouring yourself out in the pulpit. Lows that inevitably come after the highs of corporate worship. Regrets about what I didn’t say, or didn’t say quite right, or said and should not have. Even when “it went well” from all the preacher can tell, we feel an emotional deficit because of all it takes to prepare and deliver a sermon.

Maybe the most underrated aspect of the Mondays isn’t what’s now past, but what’s still ahead: next Sunday. Another week of preparation. Another seven days to shoulder the burden. Another week of pondering what to say, and the often harder work of what not to say. Another week of waiting on God to provide a word from his word to again feed and preserve the people.

Good Christian preaching and teaching requires regular, and at times enormous, self-sacrifice. In the preparation. In the moment. And outside the pulpit. It’s often a quiet, private, behind-the-scenes mantle the preacher’s wife and children see, but the congregation does not. It is not heavy lifting physically, but it can be unusually taxing spiritually and emotionally.  It is a burden good preachers gladly bear, and yet it is a blessed burden.

Mid-Sermon Mirage-  Every Christian knows what it’s like to hear a sermon, but very few know the personal costs involved in faithfully giving one. Hearing a sermon takes half an hour or so. Giving one takes days, if not weeks, and in some sense a lifetime. How easy it would be for a listener to sit comfortably in the pew thinking, I could do this, and better. It’s simple to see what he’s doing wrong. It would be a quick fix if he just asked for our help, right?

One of preaching’s many paradoxes is the disparity between how hard it is to stand up and preach well, and how easy it is to sit there and take it lightly.

Wouldn’t it be great if I were up there and telling people what I think? Wouldn’t it be nice to have all these people listen to my thoughts? All with little to no consideration of the actual pressure, the demands and deadlines, the dying to one’s own perfectionism and putting yourself forward to be misunderstood and criticized. Pride in some of us dreams of ourselves up front as the center of attention. Pride in others terrifies us from saying anything firm to so many, especially in public, face-to-face with a crowd of potential critics.  Pride will not only jump to speak when it’s puffed up, but button the lip when insecure. Preaching bids a man come and die to both.

The Preaching Moment and Why It is So Special

"Another week means two more sermons for me to prepare. And that means the weekly ritual of opening my Bible, clicking on the Logos program on the Mac, and grabbing my favorite fountain pen and the familiar canary legal pad.

It’s amazing that after doing this thousands of times, the first thought that comes into my mind as I start is, “Now what am I really doing and how am I actually going to do it?”  Word studies, diagrammatical analysis, Greek and Hebrew, homiletical outlines, illustrations, introductions and conclusions, applications, implications, transitions, titles—sermon prep is not for that faint of heart or the lazy of spirit. But I have to admit that I love it. Really, it is my favorite part of my 'job.'

But it is far easier to forget what the design of preaching is than I would like to admit. In the forward to The Salvation of Souls edited by Richard A. Bailey and Gregory A. Wills, George Marsden provides this insightful context and quote from the preaching of Jonathan Edwards:  In the midst of debates over the Great Awakening, Edwards, made a revealing comment about the effects of preaching. During intense periods of awakenings, evangelists often preached to the same audience daily, or even more frequently. Opponents of the awakening argued that people could not possibly remember what they heard in all these sermons. [Jonathan] Edwards, responded that “The main benefit that is obtained by preaching is by impression made upon the mind in the time of it, and not by the effect that arises afterwards by a remembrance of what was delivered.” Preaching, in other words, should be designed primarily to awaken, to shake people out of their blind slumbers in the addictive comforts of their sins. Though only God can give them new eyes to see, preaching should be designed to jolt the unconverted or the converted who doze back into their sins (as all do) into recognizing their true estate (pp. 11-12).

The Goal of the Preacher...