Topical vs. Expository Preaching Response

I praise God for the popularity of the Topical vs. Expository Preaching post. It is encouraging to see people all over the world concerned with "Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth." 

In response, here is a guest post from my friend, colleague, and co-professor of Homiletics (the art of preaching) here at the Word of Life Bible Institute. Enjoy Doug Reider as he breaks down his thoughts on Iain Murray's article.

I have serious problems with Iain Murray’s argument. Take his five disadvantages:

1.      “It assumes that all preachers are capable of making effective sermons along these lines.” This one screamed problem! Someone who isn’t capable of doing an expository sermon should probably not be doing a sermon at all! His point here is saying either that some can’t figure out what most texts are saying (hence the need to always do a topical sermon) or that some can’t preach what the text is saying (you can’t figure out how to put the ideas into words that the people can understand).

a.       If you really can’t figure out what Scripture is saying, then why should anyone trust your ability to figure out what Scripture is saying about a topic? The reality is that you can’t. If you can’t do biblical theology, they you can’t do systematic theology. Is theology based on our philosophy or on Scripture?

b.      If you can’t figure out how to preach what you see Scripture is saying, then why would a topical sermon be any easier? Should we avoid a subject matter just because it’s hard?

c.       This does not mean that you have to understand every passage in Scripture or be able to expound on every idea taught—one must start someplace. There are certainly passages I don’t understand well enough to preach and subject matter I’d struggle preaching, but that shows need for improvement, not a reason to ignore those passages or subject matter.

2.      Preaching is emphasizing application, as he’s pointing out. I would agree. Preaching does not equal teaching. But, he is implying that topical sermons emphasize application better. That is not true. It can be true, but there is no direct connection. Of course, I’ll be able to preach a topic that is easier to apply…and ignore all those I don’t like to apply.

3.      Interesting…so? :) Maybe more churches need to add the lecture part.

4.      And topical preaching’s track record is impressive? That’s almost comical. “It [expository preaching] has never proved popular in the long term, and the reason for that, I think, is clear: a sermon needs a text as the basis for a memorable message.” And there’s the problem—topical sermons do not need a text. In fact, they don’t need Scripture at all.

5.      And here again he’s right. There really are reasons for topical preaching. A purely evangelistic message will be topical—you’re talking about salvation, which is a topic. But if every sermon from the pulpit is about salvation, then the people starve.

The only way to do a good topical message is to consider all texts that deal with the topic, otherwise one is only considering texts that support one’s own concept of the idea. If topical messages are to be preferred, that implies that considering all texts is somehow easier, which it is not, or that one doesn’t really need to consider the entirety of Scripture on a topic, which produces eisegesis. If I don’t consider the entirety of Scripture, then I’m no longer doing induction (the basis of systematic theology) and it will be very easy to drift into heresy. Topical messages are inherently deductive (start with the idea and then look for backup support).

Again, that does not mean topical messages don’t have their place. There’s a good reason for them and to use them, but someone who only preaches expository messages, at worst, may bore people if he preaches poorly (as the author points out) whereas someone who preaches topical messages, at worst, will go into heresy. For example, say I wanted to preach the idea that God made homosexuals to be homosexuals and intends them to live that way? Could I preach that topic? Sure could…and I’d have a boat load of individual verses to back my topic up. On the other hand, good luck trying to get that idea across using expository preaching without sounding contrived. :)