004 - Preface
PREFACE And when they had appointed him a day, there came many to him into his lodging; to whom he expounded and testified the kingdom of God.— Acts 28:23 THAT THERE is a great dearth of expository preaching in the pulpits of today is apparent to all. Dr. Andrew W. Blackwood, possibly the best-known authority on homiletics in this generation, recently said this: “For years I have preached and taught. I have studied the pulpit ways of many ministers, past and present. More than ever I now believe that the right sort of expository preaching brings abiding satisfactions such as the Lord grants to few men here below.”
Though the authors of standard works on homiletics extol the expositional method, they have comparatively little to say on the subject. For example, Broadus gives only twenty-one pages out of five hundred and fifty-three to the subject (forty-first edition). Williams Evans, in his concise but well-written volume, gives only five pages out of one hundred and seventy-eight to exposition. These two are typical; hence the writing of this volume. This treatment is designed to serve a twofold purpose. First of all, the writer desires to offer something that will be of practical benefit to the man in the pastorate, who may or may not have had formal training. With this in mind we have sought to avoid verbosity and undue technicality. We have also endeavored to delete all extraneous material, confining ourselves strictly and exclusively to the matter of exposition. Matters which apply equally as well to other types of preaching, and which have been well treated in other works, have been eliminated also.
It is also desired that the volume may serve as a guide for a course in senior homiletics, assuming that the student already has a thorough grasp of the general principles of homiletics. Additional material will be incorporated at the discretion of the instructor.
Instead of a multitude of footnotes, a complete list of sources, including the names of book, author, and publisher, will be found in the addenda. It is not to be understood that the author endorses all of the doctrinal positions held by those from whose works quotations have been selected. The King James Version of the Bible is used throughout except where otherwise indicated.
—D.M.W.