An argument for expository vs. topical preaching:

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ĕ ē
ĭ ī
ŏ ō
ŭ ū

The Bible is not a book about you and your problems. It is not a “how to” book. It will not tell you directly “How to Have a Successful ___.” Nor is it a collection of moral lessons. It is not Æsop’s Fables or VeggieTales. The Bible is God’s revelation of himself to man. To reduce it to some kind of life manual is to miss the point entirely. The Bible does contain instructions and morals. But if we focus on practical lessons, we will miss the big picture — God himself — and, failing to know God, we will likely misinterpret those lessons, as well. Topical studies are not without value, but their value is mostly limited to that topic alone. No teacher can cover every Biblical topic, nor can any student. So, even (wrongly) assuming the primacy of practical instruction over textual saturation, topical study cannot prepare anyone for every situation they will face. To illustrate:

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wh th
ph qu

Once upon a time in a far away land, I was taught to read. But before I and my young classmates got to actually read anything, we were taught letters and their sounds, and the sounds of various combinations of consonants and vowels, i.e. phonics. When we finally received our readers, we were expected to use our phonics skills to decipher the stories therein. Pleas for help were countered with “Sound it out!” and so we learned to do just that. While we were “sounding out” words for Mrs Schmidt, students in the same building, but a decade older, were stumbling as best they could through their literature. They had not been taught phonics. They had been taught to recognize words. Consequently, every new word they encountered was strange to them. I, on the other hand, recognized new words simply as new combinations of the same old sounds, so at a very early age, could read words like “juxtaposition,” “pharmaceutical,” and (an early favorite) “ăn-tī-dĭs-ĕs-tăb-lĭsh-mĕn-tā-rï-ăn-ĭs-m.”

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Pastors and teachers, consider this when you prepare your sermons and lessons. Yes, you can teach “what the Bible says about ___,” but that is the equivalent of word recognition. Expository preaching and teaching, fundamentals of theology, hermeneutics — these are the phonics of the faith. Rank and file Christians, church members, if you have a pastor who preaches expositionally, don’t complain about the lack of practical instruction. Learn to study the Bible systematically. Instead of looking for what the Bible says about ___, seek to learn what the text says, period. Learn your letters, and the words — big and small — will fall into place.