About once every 5 years you will be tempted to preach a topical sermon–immediately repent, find a cool place and lie down until it goes away.

I love the book. The best part is the examples of outlining a pargraph and how the sentences in it suupport and define the flow of thought.

I was so mad, because I had graduated from BBS in Bible, but I had never read such a book on preaching. So I went back home and begin developing the principles I recieved from the Shepherd’s Conference and John MacArthur, and this book by Kaiser. For the next thirteen years I begin to learn how to use the principles in this book. And in those thirteen years taught the Scriptures from a exegetical theological and build the sermon based on the scriptural text

I liked the opening remarks Kaiser said about Tenney, “I first learned the analytical method of exegesis and who instilled in me an insatiable love for the Scriptures and the idea of applying the rudiments of this method to Hebrew.”

Along with John MacArthur who helped me put into practice this method of knowing the Scripture and applying the prinicples when preaching.

Learning to preach that is totally Biblical in that it is guided by God’s Word in its origins, productive and proclamation.

By far the best book I have read on how to learn to preach.

I would concur with Nathan’s assessment of Kaiser’s OT/NT hermeneutic. More specifically, Kaiser holds to a “single-meaning” interpretation, which means that what the NT author says it means is exactly what the OT passage/author meant. There are not multiple meanings to a passage. In other words, Isa. 7:14 primarily refers to Jesus. He gives a significant defense of this position in “The Right Doctrine from the Wrong Texts?”.

I highly recommend Christ-Centered Preaching by Bryan Chapell which includes both philosophy and methodology which is true to the title. Invitation to Biblical Preaching by Don Sunujkian is also a very practical resource.

In that vein, what is your opinion on Grant Osbourne?

I wonder, though that we have linked hermeneutics to preaching a certain style of preaching and that’s it.

Proper exegesis should be something taught to everyone, and something that every mature believer should have some skills with. I’d even go so far as to say that acquiring these skills and being able to interpret scripture is one of the things that makes a mature believer.

I’m still not convinced on the “this type of preaching is the cornerstone” part though. From what I see of his arguments, a reasonable conclusion is that proper understanding of the scripture is key. Tying that in to expository preaching being the only way to communicate a proper understanding isn’t so clear.

Unfortunately, I left my copy of Toward An Exegetical Theology at church and I won’t be able to provide a specific quote for you right now. Hopefully I will in the next few days though. My impression was that Kaiser thought almost exactly the opposite. The quote I am thinking of indicated that even when it didn’t seem so there was always a hermeneutically sound basis for the way in which the New Testament authors used OT Passages. In other words, they never took the OT passages out of context and made them say what they wanted them to say.

Nathan Williams