Proclaimer Blog
It can still be expository preaching if….
….you just preach one verse.
Text preaching! Perish the thought.
Then again, no.
It's patently clear that some of the greats of the past did this. Their sermons were sometimes more expository than they are given credit for. In part, that is because (with preachers like Spurgeon and Archibald Brown) you never get to hear the reading comments they made which often set context and did various other things we would typically do in a sermon.
But if expository preaching is letting God say what he has said, in other words letting the main point of the text be the main point of the sermon, then a text can be expository too.
I happen to think it is harder to preach this way then with a longer passage. Nevertheless, it has its place. My esteemed colleage, RC Lucas, told me the other day that preachers have forgotten how to preach a single verse well. I think he's right. But in some places, it is called for. There's a need to preach Ephesians 1.1-14. But if you want people to drink in all the detail, sometimes you have to preach Ephesians 1.4-5 on its own too.
Many of us will do this with targeted evangelistic sermons. Why not at other times too?