Philip Ryken on Expository Preaching

Colin Adams asks Philip Ryken, senior minister of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, 10 questions about expository preaching. Here are a few selections:

1. Can you provide us with a definition of biblical preaching?
   Expository preaching means making God’s Word plain. In an expository sermon the preacher simply tries to explain what the Bible teaches. The main points of his sermon are the points made by a particular text in the Bible. . . .
2. Do you have any thoughts on the current concern over ‘redemptive-historical’ preaching? How does preaching Christ from all the Scriptures govern the shape of your sermons?
   I have been strongly influenced by Geerhardus Vos, Sidney Greidanus, Edmund Clowney, and other advocates of redemptive-historical preaching. What I take to be the main point of this emphasis is exactly right: that we are to preach Christ from all the Scriptures, as Jesus himself did (see Luke 24:25-27). . . .
3. What books on preaching have you found most influential in your own preaching?
   I find Bryan Chapell’s book on Christ-Centered Preaching to be the best how-to manual for beginning to learn how to preach. For capturing the flavor of what preaching is all about my favorite book is John Piper’s The Supremacy of God in Preaching.
4. What has been your practice in preaching as regards consecutive expository, textual or topical preaching?
   My general practice is to preach expository sermons from consecutive passages in whole books of the Bible. On occasion I have preached a more topical series, but I have generally done this in expositional format. . . .
5. What concessions, if any, does the modern preacher have to make in order to speak to postmodernity?
   I’m not sure that any preacher ever has to make any concessions to anything except the Word of God, to which he submits as his only ultimate authority. Of course it is true that any preacher needs to know the context in which he is preaching. . . .

Read the whole post at Unashamed Workman.

HT: Justin Taylor

See also:

• Tim Keller on Expository Preaching
• Voddie Baucham on Expository Preaching
• Liam Goligher on Expository Preaching
• Vaughan Roberts on Expository Preaching
• Thabiti Anyabwile on Expository Preaching
• Conrad Mbewe on Expository Preaching

Like this post? Subscribe to our feed .