Preaching Verse by Verse

Weekly Update – August 18th, 2022

Over the next few weeks, we will examine a few different topics that are pertinent to the context of our church.  This week we will look at our vision/mission, as well as some opportunities for this fall.  Then in September, we will take a few weeks to examine biblical leadership as we consider our own leadership structure at FBC.  Nevertheless, even though we are taking a few weeks to examine topics from the scriptures, our normal pattern as a church is to spend our Sunday mornings, not on different topics, but in a book of the bible moving sequentially forward either verse by verse or chapter by chapter.  Therefore, this week, I want to explain why it is that we walk verse by verse through the Scriptures on Sunday morning.

First, why verse by verse through a book?  The cry now in our modern culture is that preaching is boring, it does not meet the needs of the day, or that it is just simply wrong.  But, we as God’s people must believe contrary.  We must believe that without the word of God, there is no spiritual life for us.  Without the word of God, there is no hope.  Without God speaking to us through his word, we are left to exist like the dry and dusty bones that covered the valley of Ezekiel’s vision from Ezekiel 37.  The only way that we will come alive is through God speaking to us.  Therefore, our goal on Sunday mornings is to understand the Scriptures, to see them in the context for which they were written, and then to apply them.  And the way that God has ordained for us to do this is through the preaching of His word. 

Second, what this means then is that we take a book of the Bible and we spend time examining the entire book, we do so in order to understand the central theme of what God is communicating to us, with the opportunity to then connect that theme to the whole of God’s word.  Going verse be verse through a book allows us to do this.  Plus, going verse by verse through a book prevents us from skipping difficult passages.  We are forced to think and to trust the Lord as we must sometimes navigate through scriptures that make us feel uncomfortable.  When the regular habit of preaching is through whole books of the Bible, carefully considering every word in context and in light of the larger whole, it expresses a desire to follow God’s own thoughts by tracing the flow of Scripture.  It then increases our trust in God and our confidence in his word. 

On Sunday we finished the books of 1^st and 2^nd Timothy?  Last summer we took some time to walk through the Old Testament book of Ezra.  Before Ezra, we went through Malachi, 1 Peter, select Psalms, as well as Ephesians, the gospel of Mark, etc.  My desire then, if are starting to notice, is to work our way back and forth through different sections and different genres of the scriptures.  This, I believe sets us up to trust the Scriptures even more as we see that ALL of the word of God, whether written during the time of ancient Israel or after the resurrection of Christ, is useful and applicable to our lives.  Plus, going back and forth between the Old and New Testaments allows us to connect the scriptures together even more than it would if we simply stayed in the New Testament.

Therefore, anytime we are going through a book of the Bible, I would encourage you to study it with me.  Read the passage for Sunday morning beforehand, gather some thoughts over certain verses before you hear them preached, read through previous passages so that you are ready to connect them to the current passage that we might be on, and come prepared to hear from the Lord as His word is proclaimed.

Serving Him with You,
Pastor Michael Nelson