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What Does It Actually Mean To Just Preach the Bible?

The Bible was not written with verse segmentation. So the one-verse-at-a-time style can cause a preacher to split a unit of thought in a way the biblical author never intended.

Preaching the Bible Means Faithfully Conveying Its Message, Not a Particular Communication Style.

All three of these styles of preaching run the risk of pulling verses out of context or not accurately teaching the text. Depending on the preacher’s approach to studying the text, they may or may not be teaching the Bible. But style alone does not instantly determine whether a section of scripture is being faithfully taught.

So how do we know if a preacher is teaching the Bible? One of the easiest ways to know is if you are personally reading your own Bible.

Instead of passively receiving the truth being taught, actually do further reading. For example, I’ve heard many great preachers who have delivered sermons that conveyed biblical truths, but I’m not as certain those biblical truths came from the passage from which they were teaching. Nevertheless, I would still listen to them preach again, because I know that one sermon didn’t instantly make them a heretic.

Reading the Bible is incredibly accessible to us. Now, you might not have 20 hours a week to study one passage, as your pastor does. Nevertheless, when you read the verses around the text being taught, you will have a pretty good gauge of whether what they are preaching is completely accurate.

Be that as it may, preachers may not always hit the nail on the head, and we need to allow grace for those sermons. But there are far less preachers out there truly “not teaching the Bible” than you would think. Just because you don’t like their preaching style, that doesn’t mean they are a heretic or that they did not properly exposit scripture.

Preaching styles, just like many other aspects of the church, have changed over the centuries. The changes are not always good, and they are not always bad. But that doesn’t make them unbiblical. Too often, we make scripture and church far more rigid than Jesus ever did.

This article originally appeared here and is used by permission.