A Neglected Aspect of Expository Preaching and Bible Teaching
It has been a regular feature of my life that when I chat with a preacher after a church service and commend his sermon, he tells me how much he has benefited from writings on the Bible as literature. Almost always I listen in perplexity because in the sermon under discussion I could detect no evidence of handling the Bible in keeping with its literary nature. The literary approach to the Bible that seemed to be endorsed with such enthusiasm three decades ago has resulted in lip service, as conventional methods of handling the Bible have been misleadingly rechristened as a literary approach.
The literary approach to the Bible, and the importance of genre as a chief ingredient of such an approach, are subjects of neglect. This represents a missed opportunity of massive proportions, and missed opportunities are always sad. My encouragement in the rest of this article is to show that we…
