What is Expository Bible Teaching: Theology in Action

Levi Hightree: welcome back to theology in action. Levi Hightree here with Dr. Tony Caffey. How are you doing today?

Dr. Tony Caffey: Hey Levi, good to see you.

Levi Hightree: You as well, you as well. So you are the pastor here at Verse By Verse Fellowship and we've said that quite a few times, but what does that mean Verse By Verse, Verse By Verse Fellowship?

Dr. Tony Caffey: Yeah, I did have somebody tell me once that's that's a strange name for a church, Verse By Verse Fellowship. Um, so that's understandable. I guess maybe some people wonder what that means. The essence of what we're going for with the the name of the church is what we call expository preaching

. Okay, so we're uh focused on teaching the Bible in a certain way, you know, there's might be some different methods of teaching the Bible, different ways that people go about preaching. Um, there's even in terms of theology, ways to theologize. You use a discipline called Systematic Theology where you take uh all of the biblical content and then synthesize it down to categories. So we don't teach that way here, uh at least you know, topical sermons or Systematic Theology sermons, not that those don't intersect with our preaching. Our goal is to teach verse by verse through books of the Bible in a way that respects the context of the the passage that we're working through. So for example, I'm teaching through the book of Hebrews right now and for the last few months we've been working through Hebrews 1, Hebrews 2, Hebrews 3 and and there's a cumulative effect in that as you work through Hebrews chapter 2, you're thinking back with what you've already said in chapter one and you're trying to understand the whole of of the argument of the author of Hebrews in that letter and moving forward consistently. And it teaching in that way within the church body, it's it's not just I think the most effective way to minister to people, something that Christians have been doing since you know the first few centuries of the church. John Chrysostom taught that way, John Calvin taught that way as a reformer, but it also teaches good Bible study principles. So as a pastor, I would prefer to not see my congregation just kind of randomly going from verse to verse or you know, kind of superstitiously dropping their Bible and wherever the Bible lands, that's where I'll do my morning devotions. No, the the Bible doesn't work like that. The Bible is structured in a way that has verses uh connected to paragraphs, connected to books as letters in the New Testament or a whole um larger writings like the Pentateuch for Moses, the first five books. And having an understanding of the flow of thought and the context, yeah, is important for understanding, important for interpretation and and will help us in terms of application as we're looking to not just be hearers of God's word but doers. It'll help us to apply rightly what the Bible's actually teaching. So that's that's the methodology behind what we do and we believe in it so strongly, we put it right into the name of the church.

Levi Hightree: Absolutely, absolutely. I I mean it's oh, it was kind of a funny thought whenever I was introduced to expository style teaching. I've had the thought and realization of you don't really read anything else, no, out of order or take it out of order because you lose the context. And I think it it absolutely is the same thing with with Biblical study. Yes, it is 66 different books, but if I'm grabbing a scripture here and grabbing a scripture here, I'm completely losing so much context of what's being said.

Dr. Tony Caffey: Yep, yeah, you're right. What textbook in school would you do that with or or even you know, as somebody wrote you a letter, yeah, uh would you like skip to the middle of it, read a paragraph and be like, oh that's amazing and then fold it up and put it away and then come back and read a total different section of that? It's just you're missing what what the the intent of the author is and how the flow of thought works in a in a work like that. And and so there's that mistake that we can make in terms of the Bible. I'll give you another mistake that uh quote unquote expository preachers make and that's to fixate on the microcosm

. Okay, so I had a pastor once who would um it basically preach whole sermons on one word of the Bible, you know, and it's tough.

Levi Hightree: Yeah, I did.

Dr. Tony Caffey: It was confusing for us too, to follow along. And what he would end up doing is he would read a word and kind of unpack it, which was some of that was helpful in terms of the original language work, but then he would cross-reference that word all throughout either the New Testament or the Old Testament and it became a kind of, I've I've used this term in the past, death by cross reference

. Yeah, you know, you just you're you're zipping here hither and yawn all throughout the Bible. And I remember as a kid trying to follow my pastor and thinking like, where are we in the Bible? Like and even as a kid, I was like, I don't know where we are. Is this cross-reference where we are or that cross-reference? I know we were in the Bible, but I didn't know were we in John or were we in Romans or or what where we started from? So that's a mistake that some quote unquote expositors can make. And I think a better practice and this is something I learned in seminary is to take a paragraph or a what we would call a pericope, a preachable unit of the Bible where a a a central thought is being conveyed. Yeah, and that that expands or contracts based upon the genre. So and the Psalms that would be a Psalm, you know, because there's a consistent thought typically that goes throughout one Psalm or in a narrative section of scripture, it might be the the narrative structure with the kind of story arc where there's rising action and then a resolution. And those are usually longer sections than um like a paragraph of text in Paul's writing, which is pretty dense and usually fewer verses you can reasonably preach through with the Sunday message. So I I've thought that way in terms of preaching since seminary, what is a preachable unit, how can we even connect that preachable unit to previous messages and set it up for the following week? So there's a consistency in terms of going uh throughout a book of the Bible. And that's served my church as well as I've preached, and it's to be honest Levi, it's been the best thing for me and my soul to to read and to appropriate the Bible's message that way.

Levi Hightree: Yeah, you kind of talked about the break stuff and I know the Bible didn't originally have chapter and verse per se, but I think that there is a benefit in that and I thought you can kind of answer and see or tell your perspective on the teaching aspect of studying. You can kind of see where, hey, this is where Jesus is talking about this specific atomic topic, The Sermon on the Mount or thing like that and you can kind of expose it and know here's a stop point, here's the endpoint and know kind of be in that section of study. Is that kind of what you do?

Dr. Tony Caffey: You're right, yeah. So I I am thankful for chapter divisions and verse divisions in the Bible. It makes finding things in the Bible easy. Sometimes I'll quibble like they probably shouldn't have broke the chapter up there. I'm sure you've had those moments too, like, wait a second. And that's not inspired by the Holy Spirit, that's something that's coming later as a way to to uh structure the Bible. But there are within the the writers themselves signals that there's transitions

. So there are certain words in Greek that Paul will use to transition an argument and even if you don't know Greek, you can just follow the flow of thought. Okay, he a key word oftentimes is therefore. Yeah, you know, so in light of this, I'm moving on to another subject. There's a natural break in the way that he's structuring that. If you do know original languages, it helps too, because there's ways that the Hebrew author will signal the flow of of narrative and how that changes and also how he's the author's trying to draw your attention to something. If there's a pattern, sometimes the Hebrew author will break that pattern in order to key in on something. So there's little signals like that that are present within the Bible. And even the way that the Canon was constructed, we do have, you know, different books written by different authors. So there's clear breaks. I've been teaching a class recently on the Minor Prophets of the Old Testament and it's interesting to me just to think, okay, this there were different authors, different writers, but then this collection of 12 prophetic writings were all grouped together in one book in the ancient world. And so there's there's that break, but there's also the the conglomeration of those writings that the uh is significant in terms of the context of of those writings. So little things like that will help and as you're working through books of the Bible, and and it I think you you're trained too as the more you read, the more you start to see the flow of thought. You're exposed to more genres, um you know, the the difference between prophetic genre for instance, and poetry and narrative in the Old Testament and epistolary versus the Gospels and then apocalyptic and Revelation, you know, there's different ways the biblical authors are writing and then you you learn kind of do to do genre analysis yourself, the more you're exposed to those those books.

Levi Hightree: Yeah, you touched on on the Canon. Where uh where does where does a Canon come from? Where's the foundation, the beginning of it?

Dr. Tony Caffey: Yeah, controversial subject, right? So our Canon, uh and when I say our, I mean the Protestants' uh understanding of the authoritative scriptures is different than now. Canon is a word that's used pretty generically, so people will talk about like the Star Wars Canon, like whether whether it's legit Star Wars or not, is this part of the Star Wars Canon? Yeah, so but that's helpful to understand, like there's a collection of writings that are considered authoritative, that's the issue

. Okay, and in the Protestant world, we have 66 books that uh we would call self-authenticating. It's not that the church authenticates the scriptures, and and actually it's the other way around, the the scriptures authenticate the church. Um, but that's different from the way in which the Catholics view scripture, so they have uh some writings we call the Apocrypha that are part of their scriptures, their Canon. Um ours, the ones that have been passed down to us as as we see them theologically, are the 39 books of the Old Testament—they're numbered differently with the Hebrew scriptures but same same writings—and then the 27 books of the New Testament. And that's been uh the Old Testament Canon is something that even in the days of Jesus, those were the confirmed scriptures that were used in his day. Uh the New Testament as it was written after Christ's Resurrection, those were affirmed in the the early church. And again, I want to be careful there, because we're not affirming what scripture is, we're seeing those scriptures that were already self-authenticating, already being used authoritatively in the churches, have um I would say implicit inside of them that that theopneustos quality, the God-breathed element of 2 Timothy 3:16 and 17

Levi Hightree: Wasn't it was it Peter or Paul that was referencing what one of the other was saying was scripture in the time?

Dr. Tony Caffey: Yep, Peter did that in 2 Peter, which is fascinating if you just read that.

Levi Hightree: So that soon after the writing of Paul, there was an affirmation, this is this is more than just Paul, yeah, this is a whole, there's a Holy Spirit quality to this that supersedes other kinds of letter writing. So that's fascinating and it's fascinating to think even as Peter was writing that he as well was writing scripture.

Levi Hightree: Yeah, so so I think another topic that we've kind of talked on a little bitly before the video here is biblical uh inerrancy. Yeah, I think that kind of comes to light in this. They understood that then, let's talk about that a little. What what does that mean inherent, inerrancy?

Dr. Tony Caffey: Yeah, yeah. Full disclosure, I'm an inerrantist

. Okay, so I believe in the inerrancy of scripture. And as defined, a really helpful uh resource for people who are watching right now is the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy written in 1978, that clarifies that position. Um, and and inerrancy we believe that all that God has communicated to the scripture is true and without error. Yeah, so I would use the term infallibility interchangeably with inerrancy. And now we do need to qualify that in the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy does qualify that there uh we we would say in the original writings, what are called the autographs of scripture. So we don't have autographs uh still in existence. I heard D.A. Carson say once that that's probably good, because if we had them, then we would probably worship them like the Holy Grail or something in Indiana Jones. So we don't have any of the original writings of Paul, we don't have any of the original writings of Moses. We have copies of copies. Um, but what's amazing and I know you know this Levi, but just for the benefit of everybody here, the way in which I would say even supernaturally God has preserved his scripture over the centuries, is there's nothing even in close in comparison to that, the amount of copies that we have. There's nothing, there's no historical documents that we take for documents that comes near the amount.

Levi Hightree: Yep.

Dr. Tony Caffey: And not just copies, uh but also the the correspondence between those copies, you know, 99 point whatever percentage. So Daniel Wallace, who's a New Testament scholar out of DTS, Dallas Theological Seminary, he's done a lot of work on this and it's really quite remarkable. It's it's faith enhancing.

Levi Hightree: Yeah, you look at that because God, even though we don't have original uh manuscripts of these writings, we do have very accurate copies and lots of them that we can do what's called textual criticism and and get uh you know, a good understanding of what was originally written based upon those copies of copies.

Dr. Tony Caffey: Yeah.

Levi Hightree: Yeah, it's it really is a a fascinating just topic and disc and discovery as you kind of dig into that and the fact that in that, I really see scripture proving itself and and it and its inerrancy.

Dr. Tony Caffey: Um, I'll give you another resource too. I mentioned Daniel Wallace, but one of my favorite reads on this topic, Nabeel Qureshi, who was a a Muslim who converted to Christianity, passed away a few years ago from cancer, but uh he wrote a book called Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus

, which is really an exploration of his coming to faith. But one of the things that he deals with in that book, believe it or not, is textual criticism, because one of the accusations that comes quite often from the Muslim community is that the the New Testament scriptures have been corrupted or the Old Testament and the New Testament. And he believed that as a Muslim and then he started doing his own research and he was amazed at how well preserved the New Testament was, especially in comparison to what he held at the time as scripture being the Quran, and the way in which that had gone through different kinds of changes over the years. So fascinating, easy uh easy to read a book that addresses that subject in particular.

Levi Hightree: Yeah, and I have friends to this day that have actually gone through different seminary or Bible schools that have stepped away or kind of become confused or allow at least open the door to other teachings and things to come in because of the scriptures being added or text being added and they, well, that that's man, so I can't trust any of it. So a good example, uh in Matthew 17:21, there's the uh, "but this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting," in in the NASB it's in brackets and it discusses the fact that this was added after it's not in the original text. So what what do you do with that?

Dr. Tony Caffey: Great, good question. And Qureshi addresses that as well in that book, so I'll give a plug for it as well. So we have the 99% which we're talking about, so you take these copies that we have of the New Testament and they correlate at a percentage of 99%

, but you do have the 1%, you gotta deal with 1%. So you have uh examples like that, uh maybe verses or parts of verses. You have a section of John that's controversial with the sinful woman. Was that part of the original scripture or was it not? You have the ending of Mark, which is if you read NAS, NIV, ESV, anything other than the King James or the New King James Version, there's a caveat there that states that this is not part of the earliest manuscripts. So and and you have to deal with that 1%. And and Christians disagree. Um, you know, I I have good friends who would consider the for instance, the end of Mark as scripture. This was part of holy writ. There's um, you know, a number, a majority of ancient manuscripts that have that and so this should be considered scripture. I'm more of the opinion of uh the view is actually called the the earlier texts, but the there's fewer of them that don't have that. I see that as an addition, so I wouldn't personally preach that description at the end of Mark. Okay. And I did preach through the Book of John from start to finish and I addressed the sinful woman. I think that's actually there's enough historical correspondence with the kinds of interaction that Jesus had with people that that probably uh demonstrates a real event that happened in Jesus, like it's not that shocking if something like that happened, but it is the way if you look at the way John is written, it looks like it was forcibly inserted in that section of John where if you read before it and after it, it seems to flow more smoothly. So I actually don't consider that part of scripture either. Okay. I don't consider it, I should maybe just say it this way, I don't see that as theopneustos, I don't see it as 2 Timothy 3:16 and 17, uh you know, inspired by the Holy Spirit as holy writ. And I I had to walk my church through that a little bit, the the fundamentals of of textual criticism when I taught through the Book of John, and and for the most part they were receptive and those that disagreed with me, disagreed with me and we, you know, were able to work through it together.

Levi Hightree: Yeah, that and that was in all honesty my friends that brought that up. I didn't, I at the time didn't have an answer. I didn't know really how to address what's the difference of why is it there, is it scripture, is not, but that does uh clarify quite a bit. Thank you for that.

Dr. Tony Caffey: Um, if you read any of the standard commentaries in today's world and and it might be even good to to view the different positions on that that John passage, the end of Mark, they'll they'll deal with that in a responsible way. Um, so you know, I would commend for instance, the New American Commentary series

, very good commentary series, they they deal with that. Um, uh for for John, um I used uh D.A. Carson's commentary that was really helpful and he worked through some of those things, trusted evangelical who holds the position that I do that I'm articulating here. So more research on that, you know, is uh is possible by you know, accessing those commentaries. I'll just mention a few, Pillar New Testament Commentary good series, that's one that I uh used for John, D.A. Carson. Um also the the New International Commentary on the New Testament, NICNT, uh covers those matters, good scholars in that series as well.

Levi Hightree: Okay, great, great. I'll absolutely have to look into those. So let's come full circle a little bit. Uh we talked expository and the importance and the benefit of that. Would you say teaching topically is it is it wrong or is it just different?

Dr. Tony Caffey: Yeah, no, I've done topical sermons before Levi, so yeah, don't shoot the messenger. It happened, yeah. I think there's a place for it, you know, there's I and and part of that, I'll just speak for my own experience. I listened to a series uh by Tommy Nelson on marriage uh when I was young and newly married and that was so beneficial to me

. Yeah, and and in many ways that was kind of a Systematic Theology, he took a number of different passages throughout the Bible that dealt with marriage and just developed from that what you honestly might call a Biblical Theology of marriage. Okay. And that was fruitful. I've done that uh personally with um different topics, you know, things like even um controversial things like euthanasia and um things like abortion, things like marijuana, uh where you know, we do need uh there's not going to be a verse that says, "Thou shalt not smoke marijuana," right? But I mean if you look at the the breadth of scripture, there are principles that we can derive from several places that give us wisdom on that issue and and I would say stay away from marijuana, it's not a wise thing. There's other topics that I've dealt with or studied on my own, you know, which can be fruitful, you know, what does the Bible say about peace, what does the Bible say about joy, what does the Bible say about salvation, eternal security, those kinds of things. And I've I've benefited from those studies myself and preaching through those. But again, to go back to what we said at the beginning, a steady diet of expository preaching, working through, I think the context of specific books, is is a better way to approach, especially consistently week to week.

Levi Hightree: Absolutely. We are the pastor of Verse By Verse, before you came kind of made the joke that it's actually harder to teach topically because you're having to kind of reach out and grab everywhere. And even as a person that sits in the congregation, tries to listen, is I would end up if if it were a topical study, if we'd end up in Hebrews somewhere, I'd end up in Hebrews and read the scripture he's reading and then I'd keep reading and lose track of what he's saying and I'd end off somewhere else for a little while, which is my own kind of probably ADD brain, but I think that it does create it does put up good kind of barriers and roadblocks and keeping the direction going. And uh he did always say, and I appreciated this, that it he it didn't allow him to teach topically and address controversial issues, which is good and bad in sense and it didn't allow him to avoid topics he wanted to avoid, which I see a lot of churches doing nowadays. That's good.

Dr. Tony Caffey: And that's wise. There is a real occupational hazard for pastors: hobby horsing

. Yeah, yeah, you know, absolutely. Uh and that, you know, that helps avoid that accusation, especially I develop a sermon calendar every year, so I'm, you know, if I preach on a topic and somebody at the end of the service says, well, you just preached that because whatever happened in our country this week or because something happened in our church, I can say, um no, this is something that I planned out ahead of time. And if the Holy Spirit addressed that, then that's what the Holy Spirit did. Praise the Lord. Maybe we needed to hear that. So absolutely. Um I agree and and that that that's a helpful discipline for the pastor as well to have those guard rails.

Levi Hightree: Yeah, any take homes for the audience out of this? Is this the part where I say, get to church?

Dr. Tony Caffey: I was I was gonna say it for you, but I left it for you too. No, I I encourage people, um I know probably not everybody who's watching this goes to San Antonio or or lives in San Antonio or attends our church, but you know, I encourage people all the time to go to a Bible preaching, you know, gospel believing church

. And what I mean by that is, you know, a place that teaches the Bible faithfully, respects the context of the scriptures, whether that's a topical message or an expository message. My preference would be expository. Um and part of that too, I'll just add, you know, the gospel, how does how does Christ intersect with, you know, if you're teaching through Ecclesiastes, which I've done before, how does Christ the Gospel intersect with uh even sections of the New Testament where where maybe Paul or another author is dealing with morals and how we behave as as Christians? Um, you know, find a place where the gospel and uh our need for Christ is emphasized as well as the teaching of scripture and that'll serve you well, your family well, find that church and and get plugged in.

Levi Hightree: Thank you for your time. If you are interested in expository teaching, you can check us out at vbvash.org. We do our live streams on Wednesdays and Sundays. You can also stay tuned for more teachings in Theology in Action.