The dashing young fellow on the left is Steve Weaver, which regular readers of our On the Web links should know. I want to draw your attention to a series he has just begun called How I Prepare an Expository Sermon. “OK,” you ask, “why do I care how he prepares his sermons? I’m not a pastor. I don’t preach. I don’t care how General Motors or Ford builds cars as long as they build good ones. I don’t need to know where the nuts and bolts go.” Well, you need to know, and here are a few reasons why:

Some day you may be in the position, as I have, to interview pastors for your church. Believe me, asking if he believes in expository preaching is not enough. I have had prospective pastors say they always preach expositionally who demonstrated that they had no clue what “expository” means. Then there are those who really do know what it is, but don’t know how. You need to know the difference between wannabes and the real thing.

If you have a pastor who is giving you solid Biblical exposition, you need to know how much work goes into the finished product. That thirty minutes to an hour you get on Sunday morning represents many hours of diligent study during the week, and years of study and training behind that. You need to know why your pastor doesn’t have time for all the superfluous programs and activities you might like to see. You may only see him for a couple of hours a week, but he is working hard, and very likely putting in longer hours than you do at your job, and he is doing it for you. You need to understand and appreciate that. Your pastor needs you to understand and appreciate that.

Those are just a couple of reasons why you should care how an expository sermon is prepared. I have saved the most important reason for last:

The way an expository sermon is produced is the way you should study the Bible. The goal of the expositor is to understand what the text means, that is, exactly what God is saying through it. You most likely are not able to study in the original languages, but you can read Bible dictionaries and commentaries, and you can learn important principals such as context. Do you want to be a Berean? This is how it is done.

Update: The links to the entire series can be found here: How I Prepare An Expository Sermon: The Series.