An Expositional Plea To Rightly Handle God's Word-2 Tim 2:15

"Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth."-2 Tim 2:15 Regarding that well-known verse commentator & Biblical expositor R. Kent Hughes says, "The preacher must be given to hard, hard work. And that is what I think is the great problem with preaching today--homiletical sloth. Possibly this is because some believe that the homiletical payoff does not merit the added work. It is before whom we all will stand; it is God before whom we must not be ashamed. This command draws the picture of a workman who has done his work well and therefore can submit it to his superior without hesitation or embarrassment. As my old seminary classmate John MacArthur eloquently states concerning preparation for preaching: 'Give him a chapter and order him to walk around it, camp on it, sup with it, and come at last to speak it backward and forward, until all he says about it rings with the truth of eternity. And when he's burned out by the flaming Word, when he's consumed at last by the fiery grace blazing through him, and when he's privileged to translate the truth of God to man, finally transferred from earth to heaven, then bear him away gently and blow a muted trumpet and lay him down softly. Place a two-edged sword in his coffin.'" Such sober words of accountability for cutting the meaning of God's Word straight do not merely apply to full-time ministers of the Gospel, but every disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ! Having already given an expositional plea for reading and spending time in the 1st 3/4th's of our Bibles, the OT, this week at GBC we'll embark in "An Expositional Plea to Rightly Handle God's Word," especially as it applies to the OT and in particular, the prophets.