He sends out his word

and melts them. [Ps.147]

I've been ruminating on the start of Jeremiah. God has determined the rise of the nations to the north of Israel, that they should lay siege to Jerusalem, and tear the nation to pieces. How does he accomplish this? Clearly he's sovereign over armies. The Most High rules in the kingdom of men, and gives it to whom he wishes. He could inspire a foreign metalworker to forge a stronger alloy for superior weaponry. He could stir up the ambition of a commander, to lead his troops to take the fortress of Jerusalem. He could give the leaders of Israel over to their stupidity, that they reveal their weakness to their old slave-masters, Egypt, hoping for an alliance. He could leave the common man so given to their pride that they don't defend the country adequately. He may have done all these things. But what he told us he was doing was this: He gave a young man a message to preach, and watched over his word to bring it about. 

Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth. And the Lord said to me,

“Behold, I have put my words in your mouth.

See, I have set you this day over nations and over kingdoms,

to pluck up and to break down,

to destroy and to overthrow,

to build and to plant.”

And the word of the Lord came to me, saying, “Jeremiah, what do you see?” And I said, “I see an almond branch.” Then the Lord said to me, “You have seen well, for I am watching over my word to perform it.”

God chooses to act, he sends forth his word, in the form of a servant, and accomplishes it. Amen! 

Quote of the day: I'm a complementarian but...

I don't have much to add to this excellent post, by Thabiti Anyabwile: I'm a Complementarian, but... Women must be taught and they must teach. It's just worth reading.

'You will love this.' (Classical music and preaching.)

Conductor Ben Zander is convinced that everyone likes classical music - they just don't know it yet. And he's looking for shining eyes. I recognised it as soon as he said: I get the shining eyes thing in a good CBSO concert. 

The video presents some challenges and inspiration to preachers of the Word of God, too, who have not only all Zander mentions, but also the promises of God! A comment on Thabiti's blog when he posted this, from Timothy Reynalds: 

(1) Do I preach the gospel in confident belief that in God’s hands this message is able to awaken any soul to its truth and beauty? Don’t preach to move from 3-4%, but for 100%! What difference will that make to the way I preach to unbelievers?
(2) Do I preach to believers in full confidence that this word and this message should grip them all? What difference will that make to the way I preach?
(3) Do I have too many “impulses”: too much emphasis on lesser points or details, to the detriment of the overarching flow of God’s truth?
Now those are things I need to pray about – and pray for more shining eyes!

 Watch the video: I assure you, it's worth 20 minutes. 

[And yes, I've been around here before, as has Leithart.

[HT: Justin Taylor]

'Don't preach at me'

We know the power of words. The ability to manipulate. To skip around your logic, whirling you around with beauty, form, time, until you succumb and join the dance. To reason and persuade, to change your mind against your will, with all the cost to your life. To speak a fan of words to blow away the mist and expose that you stand on a rickety, rotting rope bridge over a chasm. Words are powerful, and scary. 

So out of respect for fear, and for fear of abuse or imposition, should we shut up?

Ruth Padilla De Borst, on 'he came and preached peace...' from Ephesians 2, at Cape Town 2010:

Now rhetoric, preaching, speaking: all these are skills practised and esteemed in Greco-Roman society, to which the recipients of Paul's letter belonged. They're highly aware of the power of the spoken word in building personal prestige and swaying public opinion. But Jesus' peace-preaching had a far more significant impact. It was grounded in his peace-being and his peace-making as expressions of the ongoing reconciling work of God who declares things into being. In the beginning, God, the creative community of love, spoke the world into existence out of chaos. In Jesus, the Word made flesh, God spoke redemption and new life into history. And through the Spirit's breath, God speaks community out of distanced individuals. God speaks and it comes to pass.

Paul had begun his letter by portraying the grand cosmic scheme of things: everything brought under Christ's lordship. He now zooms in on a visible, historical expression of that unity and authority. He leads us not to some ancient temples or some opulent modern church building. No! Instead, he lands squarely on his listeners - on the local community of Christ's followers, v19: 'So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God...'

What God in Christ has spoken into being is nothing more and nothing less than the Church, the body of Jesus' followers, the new humanity, woven together out of people from different ethnic, linguistic, cultural and religious strands.

Quote of the day: labour to describe

'This truth is something that is culturally distant to most people. It's difficult for them to understand: how they can be redeemed from sin, how Jesus could turn God's wrath, and how the blood could cleanse them, how they are justified because he bore their guilt. So it's a difficult thing for our people to understand that. But it was difficult for the first century Jew. Paul says in 1 Cor 1.23 that the gospel is foolishness: 'We preach Christ crucified, which is foolishness to the Greeks, and a stumbling block to the Jew.' But, what did he do? Did he not preach this message? In 1 Cor 2.2 he says, 'I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.' He laboured to get this message across. And so in the epistles he used different pictures and all sorts of things to remind us of the fullness of our salvation.

'I fear that today many of us have surrendered to the culture and focussed on what is easy to understand, rather than labouring to describe what the work of Christ really did. We must be using our greatest creative energies to get through the Biblical concept of the work of Christ to the people that we minister to. That's the challenge that we have. Not to present God just as one who meets needs, but the One who has a plan for the whole universe.'

- Ajith Fernando, on Ephesians 1, from Cape Town 2010 [more expositions and talks here]

For more, watch the exposition below, in which Ajith Fernando advises that while many people come to Christ to fulfil a felt need, to keep going they must be taught the difficult truths, to recognise that Christ is Truth, and that they have been welcomed into something a lot bigger than a solution their initial felt need. 

Bible Exposition:Ajith Fernando (Ephesians 1) from Lausanne Movement on Vimeo.

Over the next while, I hope to highlight some quotes and teaching from The Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization, from those of various cultures and countries. This is partly because I didn't get to attend the sessions, so am catching up now; partly because I tend to hear only the negative crit so want to acknowledge the work of the Spirit during the Congress; and mostly because I do believe that for the health and growth of the Church, it is vital to listen to perspectives that Christ has given his people in different parts of the world.

Music as preaching (or vice versa)

As I listened to Christian Tetzlaff's playful and lyrical account of Brahms' violin concerto in the Symphony Hall this evening, I reminisced on the first time I remember hearing it live - Tasmin Little, with the Ulster Orchestra, in the Ulster Hall, Belfast. I recall drifting off in young sleepiness in the over-warm hall during the second movement, and being thrown awake, embarassed, by the launch into the third. I was sitting with my Dad in the balcony stage left, for a good view of the soloist. I enjoyed it then; I enjoyed the performance this evening. Then, in awe of Tasmin Little and the virtuosic beauty of the music, particularly the double-stopping; now, amused by Tetzlaff's youthful quirky treatment of some of the piece, and struck by the musical similarity between the soloist and the conductor, the electrifying Andris Nelsons.

Music, it seems to me, is like a sermon in some respects. I wouldn't say that my recording of the Brahms (Anne Sophie Mutter, I think) is not the Brahms, but it is certainly less than the live performance. There's something about music, and a sermon, which should be embodied. The recording may be perfect - perfect balance, no distance through a concert hall, no coughs or dropped programmes at inappropriate moments, no distraction of an overactively bobbing soprano clarinetist. But it is precisely all those things which are cut out which make it so touchingly human. The music enacted in a different context every time, unique despite being written. So it is with a sermon: the word addressed to a particular time and people, in a context. (και ο λογος σαρξ εγενετο, one might ponder.)

So, also, I appreciated Shostakovich's earthy, jarring and tense search for resolution and hope, post-Nazi invasion of St Petersburg, more than the ethereal disembodied floating of souls through layers of supposed paradise, in part II of Mahler's 8th on Saturday. (Not that this fully characterises either piece - just some parts of each.)

Perhaps a feel for music gives some theological insight - the truth bubbling up to the surface, however hard repressed. The conductor turned before the Shostokovich and gave us a little exposition: the original author's meaning, its application to our day, the eternal truth behind both. 'There is always hope!' he concluded, as we were launched into Shostokovich's Eighth Symphony.

Heart-to-heart

In the latest TableTalk from theologynetwork.org, Mike Reeves chats with Peter Mead about preaching, and more broadly, communicating God's word. A heart-to-heart well-worth listening to: teaching the Bible.

Quote of the Day: the Redeemer's righteousness

I came across an address of my grandfather's, on Justification, wandering round the internet: How can man be just with God? His concern to combat the false teaching of the day, on which he had taken a stand from when he was a student, is shown clearly to be motivated by his love for the people to whom he ministers the gospel.

So then we are called upon in our day to do battle for this truth, to proclaim it and glory in it, as the Reformers did. It was for this very doctrine that the apostle Paul made such a stand in the Epistle to the Galatians. He “yielded by way of subjection, no, not for an hour, that the truth of the gospel might continue with us”. Yea, he pronounced the tremendous anathema of God upon those undermining it. He did this out of a passionate love for the truth and for the souls of men. May the same love mark us today!

If some reader is not yet arrayed in the spotless robe of the Redeemer’s righteousness, let him come, like Bunyan’s pilgrim to the cross, to receive pardon of all his sins and a wondrous “change of raiment”. Then he can go on his way with a song on his lips and in the strength of the Lord over hills of difficulty and through valleys of shadow till at last he passes triumphant into the city of God.

Get your own here

John Piper's talks from Forum are now available on desiringgod.org -
Ruth 1 - Sweet and bitter providence (My French relay worker asked what providence is: why did I not think to say, "God's providence is his completely holy, wise and powerful preserving and governing every creature and every action"? I'm out of practice...)
Ruth 2 - Under the Wings of God
Ruth 3 - Strategic Righteousness
Ruth 4 - May the Redeemer's name be renowned

From the World Service night,
As the Father has sent me...
...so send I you.

Not interested in the unpreachable

Some have recently suggested that academic theologians are not motivated by the gospel on the ground - the local church and church planting. Better, they say, not to attend a theological college / seminary for a few years, but to be trained up in the local church. Now leaving aside the practical questions (Is every minister equipped with time and gifts to train young men to be ministers in every regard? Is the Bible college student really in a bubble unconnected with local churches?), this struck me as having some genuine concerns, but vastly unfair and uncharitable to many academic theologians I know, or of whom I know, who are very much pastorally and evangelistically motivated, and entirely engaged in serving their local church. I have already mentioned one such (Pete Williams), and have just come across a good interview of Derek Thomas, who baptised me when he was a humble minister and now is a humble seminary lecturer and church minister: on The Pastor and the Academy. "Too often, a rift obtains between the work of the church and theological study. Pastors and seminary students often feel the need to choose between one or the other. Derek Thomas, both pastor and professor, joins us to talk about the relationship between the pastor and the academy." Much of use to listen to.

Quote of the day: tornado preaching

From T4G panel discussion:

You (John Piper) are a theological tornado in my soul... gracious devastation.
The Puritans were sometimes told in their preaching that they ripped up
consciences. ... Good preaching does the counselling for you... but sometimes
good preaching starts the counselling. It raises problems of conscience
that you haven't had before, but you should've. (Ligon Duncan)

Quote of the day: Preaching as Worship

Marcus Honeysett is blogging at Digital H2O, and has posted his talks from the Biblical Evangelism Conference 2003. I heard these given, and recommend reading them!

Preaching as Worship - Preaching (or, as he said, any Bible handling in whatever situation - think evangelistic Bible study, small group talk, CU meeting,...) is, in the words of Cotton Mather, "restoring the throne and dominion of God in the hearts of men."

Preaching that Speaks to Suffering and Evil - let "our preaching combine heart-wrenching weeping with unbreakable confidence in the sovereignty of God" (Piper)

Preaching the Cross -

"Lots of people would like you to not preach the cross. Non-Christians find it offensive. Some Christians think it is dull, or the basics that they have gone on from and grown out of. Some think that its just an old message with little contemporary excitement because they’ve heard it all before.

But I tell you that there is no glory in Christianity without the cross. There is no glorious message for us to proclaim without the cross. There is no power to save those who believe, no grace, no work of the Holy Spirit. Galatians 3 says that you grow as a Christian having the Holy Spirit and knowing him working miracles among you because you believe the message of Christ crucified. And without the message of the cross the gentiles are nor brought as a fragrant offering to God for his praise."

The Invitation

Luke 14.15-24
You’re in the middle of dinner, all sitting round in your flat – for once you’re all eating together! Someone’s filling you in on their view of a particular band, and you’re chatting happily about Astonbury. There’s a slight pause and someone says, ‘Tell you what – I’m looking forward to the Graduation Ball – meal, wine, music – can’t wait!” Everyone agrees. At least, that’s the way it’s supposed to be, isn’t it? Now what doesn’t happen, is that someone says in reply, “Well, I don’t know if you’ll be there actually! We can’t just assume we’re graduating! And to be honest, I’m not sure we’ll all bother to get tickets.”

But this is a leeetle bit like what happens here.

Jesus is at a dinner party. He's been talking about invitations, feasts, and the resurrection of the just. And “when one of those at the table with him heard this, he said to Jesus, "Blessed are those who will eat at the feast in the kingdom of God."” And rather than everyone chiming in in agreement (aw yeah – that’ll be awesome, I’m so looking forward to it!), Jesus responds with a story with a sting in the tale. Now, Jesus could provide wine for a wedding feast, but here he’s kind of spoiling the party. When someone looks forward to being in heaven, you’re supposed to agree with them. Especially here – everyone knew what the guy meant by the feast at the resurrection of the just. People have all sorts of ideas of heaven, but this is the real deal - they’d been told about it in Isaiah 25.6-9:

On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples
a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine,
of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined.
And he will swallow up on this mountain
the covering that is cast over all peoples,
the veil that is spread over all nations.
He will swallow up death forever;
and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces,
and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth,
for the Lord has spoken.
It will be said on that day,
“Behold, this is our God;
we have waited for him, that he might save us.
This is the Lord; we have waited for him;
let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”

So this guy was joining the dots right – Jesus mentions a feast, and the resurrection: that’ll be this – we were told about it 600 years ago, and been looking forward to it ever since! We’ve got our invitations!

So Jesus tells this story, in 3 scenes.
Scene 1 – invitations go out (15-17)

Jesus replied: "A certain man was preparing a great banquet and invited many
guests. 17 At the time of the banquet he sent his servant to tell those who had
been invited, 'Come, for everything is now ready.'

You’ve had the invitation: yes, we all know about God’s resurrection day feast! And Jesus says, ‘Come, it’s all ready.’ The Jewish people he was among wouldn’t have missed the point. They’d been waiting for this 600+ years. Here he is, dining with them – the promised one, announcing the feast is ready. The King is here. Accept him.

Scene 2: the refusals come in (18-20)

Now we're used to giving excuses - and I'm sure our tutors have heard a fair few from our classmates. These are some of the excuses people have given on their insurance claim forms: 'I started to slow down but the traffic was more stationary than I thought.' 'My car was legally parked as it backed into the other vehicle.' 'I pulled away from the side of the road, glanced at my mother-in-law and headed over the embankment.' They’re not going to work, are they? They’re ridiculous. But what’s this? Not half as ridiculous as the excuses that come in to God’s invitation!

But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought
a field, and I must go out and see it. Please have me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to examine them. Please have me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.’ So the servant came and reported these things to his master.

- I’ve bought a field and must go and see it. Eh? You bought a field without seeing it? And what, is this some amazing magical moving field, that you can’t put off seeing it for one day? “I’ve just bought a house over the phone without seeing it, and I need to go check it’s really there.” Pull the other one.
- I’ve bought 5 pairs of oxen to plough with, and am going to go examine them. Riiiight. You’ve got a brand new combine harvester on ebay, and you want to see how it goes. Check it works. Cos again, clearly that can’t wait. If possible, this guy is even more rude than the first – he’s already on his way!
- I’ve got married, so I can’t come. He doesn’t even try to be polite & excuse himself. Or ask to bring his wife along!

These excuses are lame. They blatantly don’t want to go. “Sorry, I’m washing my hair.” “I’m feeding the cat.” They just prefer these things to going. They’re so pathetic they’re funny.

And yet they’re not funny. Because Jesus is talking here of people invited by God, to his feast, in the new creation following the resurrection of the just. Jesus is talking here of guests to the celebrations of God’s kingdom, when it finally comes in fully, and those guests are rejecting it! But if they’re not in God’s kingdom when it comes, then there’s only one thing for rebels against a King when he comes in power! It would be funny, but it’s tragic! It’s scary! People prefer other things and cry off with lame excuses.

What would bring people to reject God’s invitation to feast in fellowship with him? A field, a good job, 5 yoke of oxen, company shares, a new PS2, a wife, a boyfriend,… Other priorities. The old invite doesn’t seem quite so important now. It’s ok: I’m still invited – the invite’s in the drawer. I think… but for now I’ll get on with these things – the party’s a long way off yet. It’s ok, I’m still keeping that night free – I’ll still greet Jesus when he comes back. He wouldn’t want me to give up this relationship though – this job, this thing I like doing. And then suddenly, “It’s today? Already? Oh. Please give my apologies, I just can’t make it.”

Their excuses revealed their priorities, the true desires of their hearts. Other things had crept in. The invitation to God’s resurrection feast was a done deal – it was forgotten, issued long ago. It was presumed upon. Every now and then remembered: “Blessed is everyone who’ll eat at the feast in God’s kingdom!” And everyone was just assuming they’d be there.

Now Jesus didn’t say this into a vacuum. Luke tells us clearly what was going on. You can read it in what comes before – ch.13.22-14.6. In the run-up to this parable, we see other questions join our question of why would people reject God’s invitation like this? Who will enter through the narrow door? Why will people be shut out from the table of the kingdom of God? Why will those invited so long ago not taste the feast of God at the resurrection of the just? How could anyone get in that state? How can we avoid being like that?

The answer that is given each time is that it all hangs on what you make of Jesus. He’s the invitation, the King, the host. Would they gather to him for safety, like chicks run under the wings of a hen? No, they would not. Would they welcome him as Lord of the Sabbath, in charge of God’s law, as the Law-giver, the ruler himself? No, they would not – they’d rather keep in control of their own spirituality. They refuse him. They reject Jesus.

Now you might think, ‘Phew! I don’t ignore Jesus!’ But they’re just ordinary everyday things we reject him with. Put something else in front of treasuring Jesus – your pride in being good, your knowledge of the good news of the kingdom, your enjoyment of things, job prospects, a relationship, family, the desire for a relationship, friendships, money – put anything else in front of Jesus as what you cling to, seek after, and prize: and your heart screams out its pathetic excuses to God. Because Jesus is God’s invitation. To prefer anything to God’s invitation, to Jesus, is to bar to yourself the narrow door. All preferences must go.

Most people would want the life of God’s kingdom. It’s attractive. The feast sounds great. (The alternative doesn’t sound great – weeping, gnashing teeth, being shut out, never tasting the feast of blessing…) But the feast sounds great – the glory, the beauty, the new earth to play with, no corruption or war of guilt – remember Isaiah 25: no tears, only gladness, a huge party!

But the whole point is that it’s God’s feast. It’s being with Jesus. If we’re not welcoming Jesus, loving to submit to his rule, to trust in him like a chick runs to its mother when in danger, to let him define our ways of life and spirituality, then we are rejecting God’s invitation. In fact, it’s the fundamental of sin all over again: it’s wanting God for his gifts and not actually wanting him. It’s idolatry, and rebellion. It’s certainly not accepting the invitation. The good news of the Kingdom is God, and the invitation of the Kingdom is Jesus, to come to God.

Now how do we know that, check we’re not stretching the parable? The parable is the negative side: the danger of presuming to be ‘in’, without welcoming Jesus’ rule, prizing him. Then Jesus expands on it: [14.25-27 & 33]

Large crowds were travelling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: "If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even life itself—such a person cannot be my disciple. And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. ... those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples.

It’s all about Jesus. Cling to him, not anything else.
Look! He is infinitely precious. Not just as a bridge or a ticket to what we want. He is infinitely precious.

So scene 3: the refusals are accepted (21-24).

Then the owner of the house became angry and ordered his servant, 'Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame.'
" 'Sir,' the servant said, 'what you ordered has been done, but there is still room.'
"Then the master told his servant, 'Go out to the roads and country lanes and compel them to come in, so that my house will be full. I tell you, not one of those who were invited will get a taste of my banquet.' "

God is rightly severe with those who reject Jesus – his gracious invitation to be part of his kingdom welcomed as children, not punished rightly as the rebels we are against the King. Hearing the proclamation of the good news is not enough: cling to Jesus – he is the invitation in person, its goal and its joy.

For God is not only rightly severe with those who snub his invitation, but also so gracious that he invites all sorts. Jesus was being criticized for hanging out with a rough crowd. Not the sort of people who’d be invited to dinner with God. But the religious leaders, the ‘nice’ people, the people you’d want in your flat, the establishment, wouldn’t have him! And when people who trust in ‘knowing’ or being in on the invitation reject it – reject Jesus – he goes to the riffraff.

If you know that you should never be invited to sit down and eat a meal in the new creation, with a newly resurrected body, in the presence of a holy God – if you know that should never be you, then you are in a good place: embrace Jesus.

God’s generosity is not thwarted by people rejecting him. It spills out to others, so they can glorify him for his mercy. What an encouragement in telling our friends. And more, in telling people who weren’t the ‘privileged few’ to be our close friends – those different to us at uni, the weird ones, the workaholics, those from different cultures to us, the permanent drunks, the annoyingly intelligent,… Jesus is out in the roads and alleys of… the bars, the computer labs, the library, wanting you to tell people of him: the invitation to disgraceful rebels to have dinner with the King of Grace.

“How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!"”

That servant must've had beautiful feet! So go into the lost places and compel them to come in, because nothing can go wrong. Rejection doesn’t thwart God’s grace – it will overflow to many and the house will be filled.

“Won’t it be fantastic in heaven, when God’s kingdom comes in fully?”
“Yes,” says Jesus, “but make sure that you’ve accepted the invitation – that nothing comes before me.”

Cling to Jesus – everything else is worthless by comparison.
Beware of presuming you’re ok with God if other things take your attention and count for more with you than Jesus.
Go out and find people just as undeserving of God’s invitation as yourself, and tell them to come in, in Jesus. Because none of those who reject Jesus will taste God’s feast, but people will come in from the east and the west, from north and south, and sit down at the feast table in the kingdom of God.

[With thanks to Chris Hobbs for some illustrations & the 'scene' idea.]

Treasuring Christ in the call to suffer

Listen to John Piper's two-part talk on Romans 8 from New Word Alive last week:
Treasuring Christ in the call to suffer (part 1)
Treasuring Christ in the call to suffer (part 2)

Quote of the day: the supremacy of Christ

Joy in Christ

Piper on 2 Cor 1:24:



[HT: The Daily Mail of blogs ;-)]

The reverse psychology of preaching the gospel

At least in certain ages subjects like God’s wrath, divine justice and human culpability received far more positive air time from the pulpit and elsewhere. Christians knew they were divinely, gloriously created but also profoundly and radically fallen. And God both loved and judged. And Christians then seemed to cope. I also do a great deal of listening to the voices of 2007. Many of these are Christian voices, evangelical Christian voices. And their churches are ones which rarely if ever preach on sin, hell and judgement – those topics are so antiquated and negative, after all! - and yet the people I listen to now have never felt so judged, flawed, inadequate or profoundly bad about themselves. Most are encumbered with dysfunctionalities of various forms. It is almost as if reverse psychology is at work here. It seems to me that the less we speak honestly of the human condition in all its splendour and all its squalour, the more we actually disservice those we are trying to help. The truth, the whole truth, does set us free, that is, if we have the courage to embrace it.

This from a Dr Lisa Severine Nolland offering a pastoral response to Bishop Tom Wright following his tirade against the writers of Pierced For Our Transgressions. (The writers themselves have responded here, albeit in the tiny text size of their website.)

Logic on fire!

One of the books I'm currently reading is Piper's "The Supremacy of God in preaching". In it he encourages (expounds? exalts over? delights in?) expository exaltation. But apparently he's been developing a new homiletic technique: expository combustion. I think it might catch on. And with that frivolous thought, I'm happily away for the weekend.