To preach is to stand before the body of Christ and to cry out the gospel. To preach is to be a fearful vessel in God’s hands as He seeks to use you to pour out his truth on those who would hear.

I have been thinking lately about preaching. The process has been on my mind because of some of what I am reading and I consider preaching to be critical to the life of the body of Christ. Specifically I have been wondering to what degree sermons tend to be more eisegetical than they are exegetical…in my experience it is actually pretty hard to find an exegetical sermon in the 21st century church. Of course this begs the question what the heck is eisegesis and exegesis in the first place.

As always we must turn to the world’s best dictionary, the Oxford English Dictionary, for a little definition help.

Exegesis: noun (plural exegeses /-siːz/)[mass noun] critical explanation or interpretation of a text, especially of scripture: the task of biblical exegesis. Origin: early 17th century: from Greek exēgēsis, from exēgeisthai ‘interpret’, from ex- ‘out of’ + hēgeisthai ‘to guide, lead’

Eisegesis: (from Greek εἰς "into" and ending from exegesis from ἐξηγεῖσθαι "to lead out") is the process of misinterpreting a text in such a way that it introduces one’s own ideas, reading into the text.

There are generally two primary ways of developing a sermon – one is to take a list of ideas or themes relevant to the life of the congregation or the culture and then scour the scriptures searching for texts that support and develop that theme. While this can lead to sermons that one migt initially feel are very "relevant" the problem with such an approach is it subjects scripture to the leading of culture rather than the other way around. While it isn’t always reading into the text in the purest eisegetical sense there is a progression from the world toward scripture (eis) rather than starting with scripture and working out toward the world (ex). In that sense the pastor is moving in through the out door which will almost certainly lead to tragic consequences as any new waiter or waitress will tell you. 🙂

The other way (and as I have seen and read the increasingly less popular way) is to start with the Word and draw out of (ex) the text the truth God is intending to deliver, prayerfully and studiously seek to understand said truth in the context of the original audience and only after tis is done bring that truth into the cultural context of the congregation/body of Christ. In this way the Word seeks to inform culture and transform it (or as Walter Brueggeman says "the Word redefines the world").

One might think I am being a tad nitpicky but there is a real danger in an eisegetical approach. Rather than the Word redefining the world (exegesis) the world will seek to redefine the Word (eisegesis). Once the Word has been redefined by the world it then is no longer the Word – it is simply words which can be manipulated to our hearts content.

If, as Saint Paul has said, the wisdom of the world is foolishness then we should not allow it to shape out preaching nor to inform it.

I will close with an observation about the content of American preaching circa 1930 from Dietrich Bonhoeffer worth repeating and remembering:

"…they preach about virtually everything; only one thing is not addressed, or is addressed so rarely that I have as yet been unable to hear it, namely, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the cross, sin and forgiveness, death and life."