Final quotes from Expository Preaching Plans and Method

From F. B. Meyers book entitled Expository Preaching Plans and Methods (Meyer, F. B. Expository Preaching Plans and Methods. London: Hodder and Stoughton. 1910).

Chapter 6 - Riches of the Bible

Consider this lengthy quote by Meyer:

IN answer to this plea for Scripture exposition, it might be answered that the times need to be preached to, and that men must be up to date in their choice of themes. But such criticism ignores the fact that:

Human life in its essential features does not vary from one age to another. Whether lived in the gray dawn of history or in the New York Broadway, the play of human passion, of love and hate, of jealousy and revenge, of hope or foreboding, is identical. The dress, speech, accessories may differ, but all this is superficial and transitory; the woman that wore the jewels of an Egyptian sarcophagus was actuated by the same motives as her sister in the height of Parisian fashion. It is for this reason that the drama of every age retains its fascination for all succeeding ones. Neither Aristophanes, nor Moliere, nor Shakespeare can grow old. Drama possesses this quality because it holds the mirror to the heart and unveils its most secret passages.

What is true of the drama is equally true of Scripture. Humanity retains with unerring precision whatever is true of itself, whatever portrays the inner working of heart and mind, which no man could confess to his fellows, but every man recognises when set out before him. With infinite relish, therefore, generation repeated to generation the story of Abraham and Isaac, of Esau and Jacob, of Joseph and his brethren, of Moses and Aaron, and of all the other good men and bad, who pass before us in the ever-shifting panorama. These stories have been passed on from from lip to lip under the shadow of the pyramids and on the sands of the desert, by the Bedouin, the Mesopotamian, the Syrian, and the Hebrew. The attrition of the ages has moulded, rounded and smoothed them as the ocean waters the pebbles or the brooks the swirling stones. The very ease with which they unfold, the elimination of all extraneous matter, the clear-cut sentences which reveal tracks of character as lightning at night reveals a landscape, all prove the charm, the spell, the attraction which these ancient records have wielded. To be unfamiliar with them is to be uneducated and miss the chief opportunity of becoming acquainted with the throbbing heart of humanity. The Bible is not only the Word of God, but the revelation of man. It is the university of the world. Therefore to unfold its story in successive discourses is to enchain the interest of ones audience and procure a profound assent. The bad man recognises the workings of his own evil nature; the weak man sees the reflection of his own broken resolution and foiled purposes; the tempted perceives that other men have trodden the valley before him and encountered the straddling form of Apollyon ; whilst the tempest-tossed learn that the storms that sweep their sky have spent themselves on others, and have been succeeded by blue skies and clear shining. "If there come in one unbelieving or unlearned, he is reproved of all, he is judged by all; the secrets of his heart are made manifest; and so he will fall down on his face, and worship God, declaring that God is in you and truth. (119-121)

Still more quotes from Meyer

Here are a few more quotes from F. B. Meyers book entitled Expository Preaching Plans and Methods (Meyer, F. B. Expository Preaching Plans and Methods. London: Hodder and Stoughton. 1910).

Chapter IV - THE EXAMPLE OF OUR LORD

It has been truly said that no disciples of Browning or Tennyson, Milton or Shakespeare, Goethe or Dante, Virgil or Homer, were ever so saturated with their master s thoughts or so steeped in their spirit as Jesus was with Scripture.(76)

It was its sustenance of His own soul's life and the nourishment of His spiritual nature. His human character developed along its lines, whilst His moral and spiritual being was perfected by its indwelling up to the full stature of His glorious manhood. He performed His life-work under its inspiration, defended Himself by its examples, resisted His temptations in its strength, sustained His soul by its comfort, died with its blessed words upon His lips. To Him it was the true and faithful "Word of God, which could not be broken, but was the foundation and pillar of truth. So we may readily suppose, therefore, He was The Prince of Expositors. We are told that "He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself." (76-7)

Our Lord was also careful to consider the text in relation to the context and the whole tenor and teaching of Scripture. The habit of taking a little snippet of a verse from any part of the Bible and making it the subject of discourse, exposes the preacher to the danger of an unbalanced state ment of truth, which is very prejudicial. Nothing is more perilous than the partial knowledge of God s truth, which is based on sentences torn from their rock-bed and viewed in isolation from their setting.(78)

It is possible to fasten the mind upon a single line, so as to miss the whole revelation of the Bible. We have to compare spiritual things with spiritual. It is written here, and it is written again ; and the one passage must be read in the light of the other. You must have the whole Bible, and not an isolated text, to rest upon. There is a Biblical spirit as well as a Biblical letter.(79)

Surely this Biblical spirit is more certainly imbibed, and the whole tenor of truth more certainly embraced, when a congregation is led consecutively through some noble argument like that of the Romans, or a series of ascents like those of the Hebrews, than would be possible if isolated topics were selected, apparently at haphazard.(79)

If God could still assert Himself as the God of Jacob two and a half centuries after he had been laid to sleep in Machpelah s ancient cave, then Jacob must still be alive! What light this casts on the possibilities that sleep under the simplest texts ! We pass and repass over them, like the prone gravestones of an old churchyard, which have become a well-worn pathway to hurrying feet, but we cannot exhaust the depths that lie under.(81)

So of literature ; however elevated its tone, lofty its thought, eloquent its expression,
it is not Scripture, because it is not, in any special sense, the organ and weapon of the Divine Spirit. The absence of the quickening energy and vitalizing power of the Holy Spirit from any writ ing constitutes an impassable gulf between it and Scripture.(82)

We must not speak of Scripture as having been once inspired of the Spirit of God, as though it were not so now, but as still being inspired. The bush burns with fire. The voice of God speaks in it. The Word gives living force to the words. The words are, as our Lord affirmed, both Spirit and life. As the sun burns in our furnaces, its heat having been for millenniums bottled up in the coal, which has been described as fossilized sunlight ; so the Holy Spirit is present in Scripture as in no other writing under heaven. Our Lord s perception of this made the Scripture His constant meditation and final court of appeal. And in proportion as we use them, enforcing and applying, we also shall discover that to a super-excellent degree they contain not only oracles, but the power of God.(82)

Whatever God has promised in Scripture He is prepared to make good by His power. Not only is there power in the Word, but with it. We must know the Scriptures and the power of God. In the proper balancing of these two in the study of Scripture on the one hand, and in the adoring contemplation of God s power on the other we shall find our best preservative against the errors of our age; and so we may await the hour when God will vindicate Himself. "What he has promised he is able also to perform." (83)

Not the Scriptures without the Power, or you will arrive at the dry-as-dust pedantries of Pharisee and scribe. Not the Power without the Scriptures, or you will drift into the ineptitudes of mysticism and fanaticism.(83-4)

Quotes from Expository Preaching Plans and Methods - Chapter 5

Here are a few more quotes from F. B. Meyers book entitled Expository Preaching Plans and Methods (Meyer, F. B. Expository Preaching Plans and Methods. London: Hodder and Stoughton. 1910).

I really enjoyed these opening paragraphs. They're a bit longer than most quotes I pull out, but the paragraphs are worth the read:

The benefit of the Expository Method to the preacher is immense. In the first place it saves him from the search for a subject or text, which is sometimes extremely tiresome and wasteful of his time. There are times when for hours nothing bites. The mind cannot settle. It visits flower after flower without extracting a drop of honey. But there is small danger of this when Exposition is the preacher s rule.

Probably on Sunday night, when the family has dispersed, he will take his Bible in hand and turn to the paragraph next in order to that from which he has preached during the day. The emotions that have wrought within his soul have not died down. The sea still heaves with mighty billows. If his sermons have failed, he sees where
and why, and girds himself with desire to lay emphasis on the neglected truth ; or if his sermons have succeeded, he is desirous of carrying forward the impression to further results. He can see his congregation still facing him, or can feel them tugging hard at his heart and brain. The reaction has not set in. The glow of the day still lingers on the mountain peak, and he is standing there, though he realizes already that to-morrow he may be still descending into the valley beneath. This is the hour when, with the light of the Holy Spirit illumining the printed page and his soul, he cons the paragraph next in order, until probably its salient features, its lesson, or its pivotal sentence grips him.

He has his scrap of writing paper at hand and makes a few rough notes. There is yet no coherency or connection between those fragmentary jottings. In jumbling disorder they have tumbled from his hand, and lie there in confusion. A word, an anecdote, a reference to some recent reading; they are there as the hues of a gorgeous sunset, caught by a lover of nature s most radiant hours, may lie hidden under the jottings of his notebook. (95-6)

On commentaries Meyer writes:

We must not appropriate a man's expression of thought, this is his own, but thoughts, so far as we appropriate them, and allow them to grow in the soil of our own mind, and reproduce them selves after their kind, become ours. We are free to use all truth which has germinated in ourselves and drawn on the resources of our soul. It is in this sense that commentators serve us they set us thinking. (99)

A few more quotes:

After the preacher has stated the main thesis of his sermon, there should be a little time spent in showing that it is consistent with reason. It may be above reason, but it is not contrary to reason. (101)

The speeches of great orators and preachers generally excel in the lucidity of their presentation of their valid claim to the assent and consent of the reason. (101)

The gateway through which truth comes to them[the imaginative, poetic mind] is made of pearls saturated in a very phantasmagoria of splendour. (103)

But the end of all preaching is to obtain the assent of the will. We are not what we think or feel or imagine, but what we will. The will is the keeper of the citadel. It is our innermost self. Until that yields, nothing is yielded. Until that is surrendered, nothing is really gained. (106)

More quotes from Meyer

Here are a few more quotes from F. B. Meyers book entitled Expository Preaching Plans and Methods (Meyer, F. B. Expository Preaching Plans and Methods. London: Hodder and Stoughton. 1910).

Chapter III - ADVANTAGES OF THE METHOD

It is a sad discovery to find the woeful ignorance which prevails in congregations to-day of the great basic truths of religion, which should underpin the Christian experience. Probably we all shrink from preaching doctrinal sermons as such. The days are past when our people can stand chunks of doctrine piled on their plates for
their digestion. They are not able to masticate or digest them. Minced meat and minced small is more to their mind.(52)

This is why the short term of ministry, too much in vogue in the present day, is so greatly to be deplored. It does not give the minister the chance of unfolding the Bible to his people. He therefore wanders aimlessly over the entire surface of the boundless prairie, browsing here and there, according to his whim, instead of leading his flock systematically from one fenced-in portion, to another, until in due time the whole has been covered and has yielded its contribution to their health and well-being.(55)

When the minister is always turning to the Word of God for his authority, when his finger falls naturally on the open page where the proof text awaits his appeal, when each argument is clenched by the endorsement of the Divine Word, he not only places himself on the highest vantage-ground possible, but compels his people to stand before the Supreme Tribunal.(61)

There is, of course, a gradation in its[the Bible's] teachings, from the twilight of the earlier portions to the meridian of the Epistles of John, but it stands for evermore not only as the Illuminator and Comforter of the soul, but as the power-house from which the energy of God is passed into the sermons of the preacher and the resolutions of his congregation.(62)

I found this rather interesting:

For the most of us it is unwise to enter into detailed defence of the Bible. The familiar humourous story of the verger who said that he had heard all the Bampton lectures and was thankful to be still a believer, suggests that the effect of such sermons on ordinary people is rather in the direction of disturbing than of reassuring them. Probably the Bible is better left to give its own witness to itself. We are not sent to defend the Bible, but to give it utterance, and it will defend itself and its expositor.(62)

Quotes from Expository Preaching Plans and Methods: Chapter 2

Here are a few quotes from F. B. Meyers book entitled Expository Preaching Plans and Methods (Meyer, F. B. Expository Preaching Plans and Methods. London: Hodder and Stoughton. 1910) They come from the second chapter; Expository Preaching-What Is It?

"But among all these[preaching methods] Expository Preaching should have a very conspicuous place. It should be the standing dish; nay, it is the table on which all the dishes are placed." (26)

"We are now able, in the light of these distinctions, to define Expository Preaching as the consecutive treatment of some book or extended portion of Scripture on which the preacher has concentrated head and heart, brain and brawn, over which he has thought and wept and prayed, until it has yielded up its inner secret, and the spirit of it has passed into his spirit." (29)

"The main burden of all our preaching, as we have seen, must be Jesus Christ, and the expositor questions often how much of Christ there is present and how he can make Him known."(33-4)

" Many a track of Scripture, when we first read it over, seems as though it were hardly worth considering, and then the hidden Christ is suddenly discovered ; and to have found Him is to have come on a mine of treasure from which the whole congregation will be enriched on the following Lord s Day." (34-5)


I also enjoyed Meyers description of the preachers summer vacation:

But let us consider more particularly the method adopted by the Expository Preacher. We will suppose that he had been led to choose either the Book of Exodus or the Epistle to the Hebrews. He will perhaps have made his selection for the coming autumn and winter before he starts on his summer vacation. With all his other preparations for golf, or fishing, or camping out, he takes a handy pocket copy of the chosen Scripture. On the moor or in the hammock, within sound of the break of the waves or of the crunching of glaciers, he reads again and again, until the central lesson, the motif, begins to reveal itself. (30)

F. B. Meyer and Keith Green

This quote by F. B. Meyer,

"In every sermon there should be a stained-glass window, through which the light should enter, dyed and saturated with the glow of colour."

Reminded me of this Keith Green song:

Stained Glass

We are like windows
Stained with colors of the rainbow
Set in a darkened room
Till the bridegroom comes to shining through

Then the colors fall around our feet
Over those we meet
Covering all the gray that we see
Rainbow colors of assorted hues
Come exchange your blues
For His love that you see shining through me

We are His daughters and sons
We are the colorful ones
We are the kids of the King
Rejoice in everything

My colors grow so dim
When I start to fall away from Him
But up comes the strongest wind
That He sends to blow me back into his arms again

And then the colors fall around my feet
Over those I meet
Changing all the gray that I see
Rainbow colors of the Risen Son
Reflect the One
The One who came to set us all free

We are His daughters and sons
We are the colorful ones
We are the kids of the King
Rejoice in everything

We are like windows
Stained with colors of the rainbow
No longer set in a darkened room
Cause the bridegroom wants to shine from you

No longer set in a darkened room
Cause the bridegroom wants to shine from you

Care for a listen:

Quotes from Expository Preaching Plans and Methods

Here are a few quotes from F. B. Meyers book entitled Expository Preaching Plans and Methods (Meyer, F. B. Expository Preaching Plans and Methods. London: Hodder and Stoughton. 1910) They come from the first chapter; A Plea for the Expository Method.

"THE one supreme object of the Christian ministry is to preach Christ, and Him crucified." (3)

"Our ministry also must be cruciform. The thought that our Master was crucified must never be far from our thoughts. Not primarily as teacher, prophet, wonder-worker, or social reformer, but as having been slain from before the foundations of the everlasting hills ! Christ, and Him crucified," the apostle said." (4)

"All the great churches of Europe are cruciform, and all our living and preaching must bear witness, first of all, to that which we also have received, "how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures."" (4)

"Similarly, in preaching, there are two, not one, in every pulpit where the true ideal is realized." (6)

"The ministry, therefore, which is most carefully based on Scripture and honours Scripture and saturates itself with Scripture is the ministry which the Spirit of Truth can cooperate with in the most perfect abandonment." (12-3)

"All we are advancing now is, that the more carefully we keep to Scripture, the more
of Scripture there is in our sermons, the more we deal with the whole tenor of the Word of God, the more probable it is that we shall supply the Holy Spirit with those arrows which He knows so well how to use, launching them into the hearts of sinners for their conviction, and the more we shall supply Him with the pure milk of the Word for the feeding of babes and the strong meat for the upbuilding of mature character." (13)