Author: Jojo Agot

Pastor at Victory. Faculty and adviser at Every Nation Leadership Institute (ENLI). MA in Theology and Mission at Every Nation Seminary.

Exegesis and Preaching

If genuine exposition of the Word of God is to take place, [everything else] must be subordinate to the central and irreducible task of explaining and presenting the biblical text.

Expository preaching is inexplicably bound to the serious work of exegesis. If the preacher is to explain the text, he must first study the text and devote the necessary hours of study and research necessary to understand the text. The pastor must invest the largest portion of his energy and intellectual engagement (not to mention his time) to this task of “rightly handling the word of truth” (2 Tim 2:15). There are no shortcuts to genuine exposition…

The preacher rises in the pulpit to accomplish one central purpose— to set forth the message and meaning of the biblical text. 

—Dan Dumas, A Guide to Expository Ministry

The Power of the Spoken Word

Preaching the Word of God is not something we can trifle with. Preachers should tremble at the gravity of their jobs:

When God speaks, creation obeys. When he spoke the universe into existence, it happened (Gen 1:3-26). When he speaks into the cold, dead hearts of sinners, a new creation appears (2 Cor 5:17). When preachers exposit the Word of God and announce that Jesus is the Christ, the church is built (Matt 16:16-18). Whenever God’s Word is proclaimed, something comes into existence that wasn’t there before.

—Dan Dumas, A Guide to Expository Ministry 

People Pleaser

I have mixed feelings about this. While it is true that John the Baptist’s time was up as he was already done introducing Jesus to the world, it is just sad that his life was ended by the whim of a people-pleaser. I shudder at the callousness of the girl’s request and the evil in the heart of her mother. Mark 6:22-29

When Herodias’s daughter came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his guests. And the king said to the girl, “Ask me for whatever you wish, and I will give it to you.” And he vowed to her, “Whatever you ask me, I will give you, up to half of my kingdom.”

And she went out and said to her mother, “For what should I ask?” And she said, “The head of John the Baptist.”

And she came in immediately with haste to the king and asked, saying, “I want you to give me at once the head of John the Baptist on a platter.”

And the king was exceedingly sorry, but because of his oaths and his guests he did not want to break his word to her. And immediately the king sent an executioner with orders to bring John’s head. He went and beheaded him in the prison and brought his head on a platter and gave it to the girl, and the girl gave it to her mother.

When his disciples heard of it, they came and took his body and laid it in a tomb.

Not Our Choice

FRODO: (talking about the heavy responsibility of carrying the Ring) I wish it need not have happened in my time!

GANDALF: So do I, and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.

― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring