Preaching & Pastoral Ministry

Faithful preaching requires more than technique. These resources aim to strengthen the preacher’s soul, sharpen his craft, and support his calling with both theological depth and pastoral warmth.

Preaching Christmas Without Sentimentality

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Preaching & Pastoral Ministry

Preaching Christmas Without Sentimentality

Letting the text, not the season, set the tone.

Christmas Preaching
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By An Expositor

Christmas is one of the easiest seasons to preach—and one of the easiest to mishandle. Familiar texts, strong emotions, cultural expectations, and packed diaries all conspire to pull the preacher toward sentimentality. The challenge is not only to say something fresh, but to say what the text actually says, with the tone the text actually carries.

What We Mean by “Sentimentality”

Sentimentality is not simply emotion. Scripture is deeply emotional. Sentimentality is emotion unmoored from reality—warmth without weight, comfort without cost, joy without the jagged edges of truth.

At Christmas, sentimentality often looks like:

  • Reducing the incarnation to vague “peace on earth” slogans.
  • Softening sin into “brokenness” without guilt or repentance.
  • Staying in the manger without ever reaching the cross and empty tomb.
  • Using the season to reinforce nostalgia rather than proclaim news.

The result may be moving services and full buildings—but little lasting change. Our people leave warmed, not won; stirred, not transformed.

Letting the Text Set the Tone

One of the most practical safeguards against sentimentality is ruthlessly simple: let the passage itself set the emotional tone of the sermon.

Consider how different the Christmas texts are:

  • Luke 1–2 carries quiet wonder, humble obedience, and breaking joy.
  • Matthew 1–2 holds together royal fulfilment and real threat—Herod, exile, danger.
  • John 1 is majestic, theological, awe-filled: the Word, light, glory, rejection, grace.

If every Christmas sermon sounds the same, we are likely smoothing over the edges of the text. Observing structure, repeated words, contrasts, and narrative tension will help us feel what the inspired author felt, and then preach with that same contour.

We avoid sentimentality not by suppressing emotion, but by letting Scripture teach us which emotions are fitting.

Holding Together Joy and Gravity

Christmas preaching that is truly evangelical will hold together both deep joy and genuine gravity.

  • Joy, because the promised King has come, grace has appeared, and God has drawn near.
  • Gravity, because this child was born to die, to bear wrath, to save sinners.

The birth narratives are already cross-shaped. Mary’s song rejoices in salvation and reversal. Simeon speaks of a sword that will pierce. Herod rages against the newborn King. The shadow of Good Friday falls across Bethlehem’s light.

Our task is not to drag in the cross from outside, nor to leave it outside the stable, but to show how the text itself leans forward to Calvary and beyond.

Four Practical Helps for Preaching Christmas Texts

1. Start with the Normal Exegetical Process

Resist the urge to “jump to the Christmas bit.” Observe, trace the argument or narrative flow, identify the main point, and let application grow from there. Treat the text as you would in any other month.

2. Use Fewer, Stronger Images

Illustrations at Christmas are easy to find—and easy to overuse. Choose one or two that arise naturally from the text and serve the main point. Avoid sentimental stories whose emotional tone clashes with the passage.

3. Name Sin Clearly, Offer Christ Freely

Do not let seasonal niceness blunt the gospel edge. The Saviour came because we are sinners, not merely because we are lonely or busy. Name the problem honestly; then proclaim Christ gladly.

4. Preach for Outsiders Without Neglecting the Flock

Christmas brings visitors. Speak clearly to those who are unfamiliar with Scripture, but remember that your sheep also need feeding. Let the same text both invite the outsider and strengthen the believer.

Preaching the Child Who Is Lord

Ultimately, avoiding sentimentality is about honouring who this child is. He is not a seasonal symbol of hope but the Lord of glory who humbled Himself to save His people. When we keep His person and work central—His deity, humanity, humility, obedience, death, and resurrection—our preaching gains both warmth and weight.

As you step into this Christmas season, you do not need to be clever. You need to be clear. Let the text lead. Let the gospel define the tone. And trust that the Spirit delights to use simple, honest proclamation of Christ to do what no amount of seasonal atmosphere can achieve.

How Scripture Shapes the Expositor’s Imagination

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Preaching & Pastoral Ministry

How Scripture Shapes the Expositor’s Imagination

Recovering a text-driven hermeneutic.

Hermeneutics
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By An Expositor

Preachers rarely speak about imagination, yet every sermon depends on it. We picture the world of the text, sense its movement, feel its tone, and follow its argument. A sanctified, Scripture-governed imagination is essential for faithful exposition—and recovering a text-driven hermeneutic is the key to redeeming it.

A Reformed Doctrine of Scripture Shapes the Expositor’s Imagination

Imagination must never roam free. For the expositor, imagination is always tethered to God’s self-revelation.

Authority means Scripture governs every sermon. Imagination may enliven our understanding of the text, but it can never improve upon it.

Clarity means the Bible is not a fog requiring creative embellishment. God speaks to be understood.

Sufficiency means Scripture provides the materials for faithful exposition. Imagination serves what is there, not what we wish were there.

Unity means every passage belongs to the larger redemptive story centred in Christ. This gives imagination a right horizon, not a licence for speculation.

Imagination Is Inescapable (and God Given)

We imagine when we visualise Abraham walking toward Moriah, hear Paul’s urgency in Galatians, or feel the tension of a parable. Imagination is the God-given capacity to enter the world of the text and perceive its movement.

Different genres demand different imaginative engagement:

  • Narrative: scenes, pacing, dialogue
  • Poetry: imagery, metaphor, parallelism
  • Prophecy & Apocalyptic: symbol, contrast, intensity
  • Epistles: tone, logic, argument flow

Imagination does not add meaning but perceives meaning already present. It is the bridge between careful exegesis and faithful proclamation.

When Imagination Goes Wrong

Speculative Imagination

This is imagination off its leash—allegory untethered from authorial intent, fanciful symbolism, and sermonic creativity unrelated to the inspired text.

Minimal Imagination

Others flatten everything into propositions. Poetry becomes bullet points; narrative becomes a doctrinal summary. The sermon is accurate but parched.

Both errors reveal a failure to let the text shape how we think and feel.

Recovering a Text-Driven Hermeneutic

A text-driven hermeneutic means reading the text on its own terms, in its own shape, and with its own emphases. It honours authorial intent, literary form, and canonical context.

Key commitments include:

  • Letting the structure of the text govern your outline.
  • Allowing imagery and movement to influence tone and delivery.
  • Letting genre determine how you enter the passage.
  • Using biblical theology to guide, not override, the immediate text.
  • Preaching Christ where the text leads, not where imagination wanders.

How the Spirit Renews the Expositor’s Imagination

The Spirit illumines the mind and softens the heart. A Spirit-renewed imagination perceives the richness God has placed in the text.

  • Reverent: submitted to the text
  • Alive: sensing beauty and gravity
  • Christ-centred: shaped by biblical theology
  • Pastoral: applying truth with compassion

The Fruit: Exposition That Is Clear, Convictional, and Alive

When imagination is governed by Scripture:

  • Sermons gain clarity, because the movement of the text is perceived.
  • Illustrations gain honesty, because they arise organically.
  • Applications gain precision, because the text’s aim is felt.
  • Preaching gains warmth, because the preacher has inhabited the passage.

Conclusion: Prayerful, Text-Formed Imagination

The expositor does not need a more creative imagination, but a more Scripture-saturated one. The prayer is simple: “Lord, let me see what You have revealed; let me feel what the text feels; let me speak what You have spoken.”

Faithful exposition grows where imagination is captive to the Word of God and shaped by the Spirit of God. May our imaginations be ruled not by novelty or sentiment, but by the beauty and authority of Scripture.

Why Expository Preaching Still Matters

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Preaching & Pastoral Ministry

Why Expository Preaching Still Matters

In a noisy age, expository preaching remains God’s ordinary means for building His church.

Expository Preaching · · By An Expositor

Few phrases are used as often—and practiced as rarely—as expository preaching. In an age that prizes novelty, speed, and spectacle, exposition can look ordinary. But the ordinary means of grace are God’s appointed path for the Church. Expository preaching still matters because only the Word, rightly preached, reveals the living God, renews His people, and reforms His Church.

The Problem: Fading Confidence in the Word

Across the evangelical landscape the centre of gravity has shifted. Sermons are increasingly shaped by felt needs, personality, and a quest for relevance. Congregations are invited to “experience” something compelling rather than to hear the God who speaks. None of this is new; it is the ancient temptation to improve what God has ordained.

When confidence in Scripture is thin, the pulpit becomes a platform for ideas, not a herald’s desk. The Reformers believed the opposite: the Word creates the Church. If the Word creates, then the preacher’s task is not to invent but to transmit—to stand under the text, not over it.

Paul warned Timothy that a time would come when people would not endure sound teaching but would “accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions” (2 Tim. 4:3–4). That time is not merely future; it is perennial. The antidote is the same in every age: “Preach the Word” (2 Tim. 4:2).

The Principle: The Word Does the Work

Scripture is “God-breathed and profitable” so that the man of God may be “complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16–17). Because Scripture is God’s speech written, preaching is God’s speech proclaimed. Exposition is simply bringing out what God has put in—letting the text set the agenda, govern the structure, and supply the message’s force.

To preach expositionally is to honour two great doctrines: the authority and the sufficiency of Scripture. Authority means the Bible rules the pulpit; sufficiency means the Bible provides what the Church most needs. John Calvin famously said that in Scripture God “lisps” to us as a nurse to a child—He stoops in mercy. The preacher’s task is to echo, not to embellish.

The preacher’s task is not to make Scripture relevant but to show its eternal relevance.

When exposition governs the pulpit, content flows from the grammar and context of the passage, not from the mood of the room. Application grows organically from authorial intent. Christ is preached not as a clever overlay but as the promised centre of redemptive history, the fulfilment toward whom the whole Bible leans.

The Power: How Exposition Builds the Church

Expository preaching produces mature disciples. Week by week, congregations learn how to read their Bibles, think theologically, and test all things by the Word. They acquire a biblical palate; sugary sermons lose their sweetness.

Expository preaching stabilises doctrine. Moving steadily through books of the Bible protects a church from hobby horses and trends. Hard texts are faced in their turn. The sheep learn that all Scripture is profitable—Leviticus and Luke, Jude and John.

Expository preaching unites a church around truth rather than personality. When the text rules, the preacher is decentered. The voice that matters most is heard in the passage. This is why seasons of reformation in church history—whether in the days of the Reformers, the Puritans, or more recently under faithful pastor-teachers—have been preaching revivals before they were anything else.

When the Word rules the pulpit, grace rules the church.

The Practice: Faithful Exposition in a Distracted Age

What does this look like on Monday morning in the study and on Sunday in the pulpit? Not complexity, but constancy.

Five Commitments for Expositors

  1. Let the text set the agenda. Choose passages by moving through books. Plan ahead, but submit your plan to the text every week.
  2. Do the hard work. Pray; observe; trace the argument; study words and context; consult trusted commentaries late, not first.
  3. Preach the gospel from the passage. Show how the text sits within the canon and points to Christ without forcing allegory.
  4. Apply with clarity and courage. Application is love. Ask, “What would obedience look like for my people this week?”
  5. Keep your tone doxological. Exposition is worship, not a lecture. Speak as one who has first been mastered by the Word you preach.

None of this is flashy. It will not trend. But Scripture never asks it to. God calls pastors to be faithful stewards (1 Cor. 4:1–2). The slow accretion of truth—text after text, Lord’s Day after Lord’s Day—is how the Spirit forms holy, joyful people.

Conclusion: Nothing More, Nothing Less

Why does expository preaching still matter? Because God still speaks. The Church does not live by techniques but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. The preacher’s task is not to outshine the text but to unfold it, trusting that the Lord will take His Word and do His work.

May the Lord raise up pulpits where the Bible is read, explained, and pressed upon the conscience in Christ. May we be men whose words are bound to His Word—nothing more, nothing less.