What Kind of a Book is the Bible? ...

TEXTUARY VS. EXPOSITORY TEACHING
(OR “PREACHING”)

That title probably doesn’t exactly grab you, and it may even have the threat of boredom about it. I started to call this piece The “Book, Chapter and Verse” Mentality, but I feared that might be misunderstood, for I too believe in giving book, chapter and verse in some instances. Yet I am suspicious of prooftexting as a reliable method for either study or teaching, and I seriously doubt if the Bible was ever intended to be used in any such way. One is not necessarily doing good teaching when he lines up proof texts like a string of beads, supposing that the more he has the better is his case. Proof texts may well prove points, but whether they really teach the word at a serious level is the question.

If I am to write about expository teaching as over against textuary, then I had best define my terms. Textuary teaching, or preaching to use popular pulpit lingo, is based upon some particular biblical text, often apart from its context, with attending embellishments, illustrations, descriptions and commentary. The clergy has christened this with the name sermon. Sermons may be expository in nature, true enough, but the expository preacher may ‘have it said of him, “He doesn’t preach; he just stands up there and teaches.”

Expository teaching is to take a portion of scripture, or a subject, and give an exposition or explanation of it in reference to its context and its historical background. The textualist tends to read into the text that which supports his deductions, while the expository teacher allows the scripture to speak for itself, drawing no conclusion except what is allowed by evidence. The expositor is therefore an inductionist rather than a deductionist, which means he moves from particular facts, drawn from scripture, to general conclusions. If he is a good inductionist, he will allow the strength of his conclusions to be no stronger than what the supporting facts allow. If the facts are uncertain, his conclusions will be uncertain. The deductionist, however, already has his conclusions in hand, and he sets out in search for texts to prove them.

If one has concluded, for instance, that a formal confession of Jesus is a “step” in a five-step plan of salvation, he will have no problem in finding a proof text, such as: “Whoever confesses me before men, I will confess him before my Father who is in heaven” (Mt, 10:32). But an inductionist will not do that. He will ask, Does the context, along with the whole of scripture, allow such a conclusion?

If we have some tongue-speakers that we wish to vanquish with the word, we can always do so by quoting 1 Co. 13:8: “As for tongues, they will cease.” And everybody knows when that will be because of verse 10: “When that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away.” Once you deduce (not induce since it is not in the text) that “the perfect” is the New Testament canon, then you have once for all taken care of those wild-eyed charismatics. If a person arrogates to himself certain assumptions to start with, he can make the scriptures teach anything he pleases. If one takes the whole of 1 Cor. 13 and presents a careful exposition as to what is actually in the context, his conclusion will almost certainly be different — at least less dogmatic.

And if you want your name for the church Jesus founded through his apostles, you just may find it in one way or another by a careful enough search. If you decide to count the prooftexts, you will probably come up with Church of God, which is there something like 12 times. If yours is some other name, you may need to look more painstakingly. But if the scriptures are approached inductively (scientifically), the question may well be asked, “For all I know the church has no name at all; I’ll draw no conclusion until I have searched all the relevant passages.” He may not come up with either Church of God or Church of Christ as a name at all.

Textuary sermonizing calls for all sorts of unwarranted assumptions. I once heard one of our famous preachers in the Church of Christ base a sermon on What are you doing here, Elijah? (1 Kgs, 19:9). Such a question provided him room to ask the business man, What are you doing in business?, and so with the salesman, teacher or housewife, What are you doing wherever you are in life? If that were not inexcusable enough, he went on to browbeat poor Elijah, first for having “the blues” under the juniper tree and next for being in that cave at Horeb, where he apparently was not supposed to be. The preacher made it clear that God was unhappy with the prophet, making “What are you doing here, Elijah?” something of a severe rebuke. This is typical of what happens in textuary sermonizing. Not only do they not say anything really significant, but they misrepresent what the Bible actually teaches.

The Bible says nothing about Elijah having “the blues” under that tree or that there was anything wrong with the way he felt. He may have been fleeing from that mad Jezebel, but so would most of us, if she had threatened to kill us within 24 hours. Yes, Elijah supposed that all the faithful prophets had been slain, but with good reason. When God finally told him, not under the tree but later in the cave, that He had 7,000 that had not bowed the knee to Baal, it was given as a matter of encouragement and information, not in rebuke. Nor does Paul make it so in Ro. 11:4. Elijah had no way of knowing that God had “kept for himself” that great remnant, which is the point of Paul’s reference to the incident. Neither the Old Testament nor the New makes Elijah out to be a cowering, downcast weakling in the story.

And what was he doing in the cave? It was surely one of the great moments in biblical history. With everything apparently going down the drain with all Jezebel’s devastation and Israel’s idolatry, Elijah went ‘back to Horeb, back to where it all began when the law was given, back to where Moses met with God. He was in that cave because God wanted him there! The context of 1 Kgs. 19 shows how God fed him twice the night before by angelic visits, preparing him for the long journey to Horeb, and once in that cave at Horeb, the Lord allowed him to stand on the mount where Moses stood, and to see the divine manifestations that Moses had seen, and finally to hear “the still small voice.” Then God sends him back to anoint Elisha to take his place, while he himself was to be swept away in a whirlwind into heaven. Some rebuke, I’d say!

But that is what textuary preaching does. It robs the people of precious biblical instruction. It is like poor Lot, browbeaten all these years for “pitching his tent toward Sodom,” another one of those texts grievously sermonized. Since the apostle Peter, inspired by the Spirit, calls Lot a righteous man and describes him as “greatly distressed by the licentiousness of the wicked,” I am afraid that we can’t make much of his pitching his tent toward Sodom. After all, he had to pitch it somewhere! I think the preachers ought to layoff poor old Lot, and leave him to be the good man the Bible makes him. But they will point to his selfishness in choosing the better land when he and Abraham separated. But Abraham gave him his choice, and there was nothing wrong in his being a good business man. And if we jump on a man because he domiciles near a wicked city, how about us when we move in right on top of them, in between them, and amidst them?

One of my old Freed-Hardeman teachers delivered one of these textuary sermons in the famous Ryman Auditorium in Nashville before thousands on “The Spirit of Christ,” based on Rom. 8:9: “If a man hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.” And from there he went everywhere preaching, showing that Jesus was sometimes like a lamb (when personally abused) and other times the roaring “lion of Judah” (when doctrine was involved). That is the spirit or attitude of Christ that we are to have, sometimes that of a lamb, at other times that of a lion.

I breezed out of Freed-Hardeman preaching that sermon, much like the old master himself, and some even dared to say that I did it even better than he did, which probably meant I was more dogmatic. I am now ashamed of treating the Bible in such a way, and I can’t understand even now how an older, responsible teacher of the Bible could foul up a passage of scripture so grossly. I recall one brother down in East Texas asking me after I had given that sermon, “Do you suppose that is really what Ro. 8:9 is talking about?”, but I didn’t have enough sense to profit by the question, even after graduating from Freed-Hardeman! If I had bothered to read Ro. 8 with any care at all, I would have seen that I was missing the point by a country mile.

Sermons may be all right as background sound for one’s private meditations in the assembly, or to pay the minister for, but as a means of teaching the scriptures they simply will not do. Not all preachers sermonize in this fashion, thank God, and some of them really teach the people, such as the time allows. But for the most part it would be just as well if we had no more sermonizing. Rather let the saints assemble and read the scriptures to each other, in different versions, and then let them share together in determining its meaning.

My main point in this article, however, is to observe that the Bible is not the kind of literature that lends itself to textuary teaching, if any literature does. When Paul wrote to the Romans and talked about the Holy Spirit, it is best to study what he says to them in that book, if we expect to understand it as they understood it. They had no New Testament to thumb through here and there, quoting what he had to say to a half-dozen other churches. First let’s see what idea the Romans had of that subject, limiting ourselves to what they had to read. When we do this we are less inclined “to explain away” one part of the Bible with another part, and we do not become dependent on prooftexts. Once we get the perspective in Romans, then we can turn elsewhere and do likewise, always making our comparisons responsibly, realizing that the scriptures did not come originally as a book such as we have, but as individual letters, each emerging out of a different circumstance.

Above all, we should give the Bible the chance that it deserves. We should read or quote it clearly and meaningfully, with proper emphasis, which we can do only if we understand it ourselves. One can abuse the word by faulty reading, even when he gets all the words right. For example, if I read Mt. 5:28 this way: “But I say to you that every one who looks at a woman to lust after her, has committed adultery with her already in his heart,” I leave the impression that the wrong is in the looking and the emphasis is on the heart. Is this not better: “But I say unto you (emphasizing Jesus’ authority) that every one who looks at a woman to lust after her (this is the sin) has committed adultery with her already in his heart.” This emphasis shows that the man has actually committed the act already in his heart.

This calls for a close study of the word for the purpose of public reading, which is much neglected in our assemblies. The scriptures say much more about reading the word in our assemblies than it does the delivering of sermons, such as Rev. 1:3: “Blessed is he who reads aloud the words of the prophecy, and blessed are those who hear,” and 1 Tim. 4:13: “Until I arrive devote your attention to the public reading of the scriptures, to exhortation, and to teaching.” I know of no scriptural instruction about preaching sermons to the church.

In all this we allow the scriptures to speak to us out of their own context. We do not read into it but out of it. We saturate our minds with the information it contains; we let our hearts brood upon the facts. We linger with the wording, noting carefully all the facts; we pray that the Spirit will give us understanding. We think for ourselves and draw upon the mutual sharing of other saints more than we depend upon commentaries. There is great power of communication when the community of saints is studying together. When a consensus is reached by a sincere group of saintly students as to the meaning of scriptural language, it is about as dependable as any interpretation.

All this is what we mean by the expository approach, which is a sincere and responsible effort to ascertain meaning within the broader contextual and historical framework. The textuary method is to give the Bible a “scissors and glue” treatment, where one creates his own doctrinal “paste up” by snipping a little here and there, prooftexting his way from Dan to Beersheba. —the Editor