First book down; what next?

by Dan Phillips

Last Sunday I preached the thirty-first and final sermon on Paul's letter to Titus. That's the first book I've preached through in Copperfield Bible Church's Sunday services.

When I started the series, I was surprised not to be able to find many in-depth preaching series online. Oddly, the longest was (as I recall) that by A. W. Tozer (mine is now longer). What I heard was idiosyncratic and helpful. One line in particularly struck me, and I used it: "When Paul couldn't go, he sent Titus; when he couldn't stay, he left Titus."

Also, I found that I didn't like any of the book's outlines that I found. Most seemed very perfunctory, and not very thoughtful. They missed the point of the book, and the flow of Paul's thought. It forced me to sweat out an outline which I thought did better justice to what Paul was saying, and that in turn helped my preaching immensely.

The series easily could have been twice as long, if I'd taken more of what is called a "categorical" approach. This method expounds verses in sequence, but also takes them as opportunities to expand on the doctrine mentioned or assumed in the verse. I think there's value to such an approach, and my sermons are sometimes hybrids in that direction. For instance, when Paul called himself a "slave" and an "apostle," I expanded on what each term meant. When Paul used words like "faith" and "elect," I expanded on them as well; and so forth.

But I could have done that to a much greater degree, and headed towards that land inhabited by men such as D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, who would preach an entire sermon (or two!) on a single word in a verse.

My design however was both to expound the words in the verses, and expound the verses in the book. I meant never to lose sight of the immediate nor larger (book) context.

That is a down-side of verse by verse exposition. Hearers can end up having heard episodic preaching on individual trees, with no feel of the forest. I'm old enough to remember when TV was virtually always that way. There was no larger "arc." Each week, Dick van Dyke and his TV family had some other whacky adventure. They were amusing, and they went nowhere.

For my part, I like the reputed approach of the old country preacher: "First, I tell them what I'm gonna tell them; then, I tell them; then, I tell them what I told them."

So the first sermon in the series was an introduction to and overview of the entire book. The last sermon was a single sermon, preached with only skeletal notes, on the entire book, incorporating highlights and keeping the flow and Paul's burden in writing.

I absolutely loved it. Titus is an amazingly contemporary book. It is a potent tour-de-force on some absolutely horrendous notions of faith and grace and Gospel and Christian living. With God's own wisdom, it speaks to Post-Modernism and contextualization; to various church-growth strategies and philosophies; to Gutless Gracers and muzzy mystics; to real-live age-ism and racism and the good and false approaches to each; and to a whole lot more.

I'm going to miss it!

But the next series should be fun. It will be on the first chapter of the book of...

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