My approach to the preaching is expository in nature. Sunday mornings I am preaching through the book of Ruth - Sunday and Wednesday nights the focus is on God the Father. Regardless if the sermon series is book based or theme based one thing is constant, a biblical passage provides the foundation and structure for my sermons. As important as it is to break passages down and help members understand them, it is also important to focus those passages within the bible’s narrative.

One of my favorite summaries of the biblical narrative comes from NT scholar, Richard Hays. You can read it below, I pray as you preach or study the bible this week you will always keep before you the good news of Jesus Christ.

The unity that we discover in the New Testament is not the unity of a dogmatic system. Rather, the unity that we find is the looser unity of a collection of documents that, in various ways, retell and comment upon a single fundamental story. That story may be summarized as follows:

The God of Israel, the creator of the world, has acted (astoundingly) to rescue a lost and broken world through the death and resurrection of Jesus; the full scope of the rescue is not yet apparent, but God has created a community of witnesses to this good news, the church. While awaiting the grand conclusion of the story, the church, empowered by the Holy Spirit, is called to reenact the loving obedience of Jesus Christ and thus to serve as a sign of God’s redemptive purposes for the world.

Different New Testament writers emphasize different aspects of this story; for example, Luke places great emphasis on the role of the Holy Spirit in empowering the church’s witness, whereas Mark mentions it only in passing (Mark 13:11). Various particular elements are elucidated using different conceptual categories, and a different “spin” is put on the story by each writer…