People appreciate expository preaching if it is done well.  People tend not to prefer the taste of exhaustive preaching.  The preacher is always tempted to try to cover every angle on every detail in the text.  After all, you’ve probably put hours of work into prayerful study and research, much of which has proved to be interesting and helpful to you.  But when it comes time to preach, selectivity is required.

Here is where the Big Idea becomes such a big deal.  Having the sharp focus of a main idea that reflects accurately and relevantly the main idea of the passage allows you to determine how to be selective.  An avenue of detail, or an anecdote of background information, or a cross-reference, or an illustration, or a side-point, or a personal soapbox, or whatever . . . if it doesn’t fully support that main idea, then it is immediately under scrutiny and should probably be chopped.

Selectivity has to take place before preaching.  Preparing to preach is not just about studying the passage.  Effort is required in preparing the message too.  Going into the preaching event stuffed full of information and selecting as you deliver tends to be as effective as planning your conclusion when you arrive at the end of your preaching time.

As Haddon Robinson has put it, “preaching can be like delivering a baby, or like delivering a missile.  In one your goal is to hit the target, in the other, your goal is to just get it out.”  It is in the “baby delivering” sermons that listeners tend to confuse expository preaching with exhaustive, exhausting, rapid-fire or overwhelming preaching.

Selectivity is probably one of the hardest skills and disciplines in preaching to master, but one of the most important.

Here’s a post from the early days . . . just for old time’s sake!