Over the years I’ve had the privilege of preaching through long books of the Bible such as Genesis, Proverbs, and Isaiah. This past Sunday I completed a marathon series through the Gospel of Luke.

Why preach through books of the Bible? Let me answer by giving my answer to another question I’ve been asked: What’s wrong with a steady diet of topical preaching?

Preaching through books of the Bible does what a steady diet of topical preaching can’t do: help parishioners see the continuity of God’s revelation by preaching verses in their immediate and canonical context.

Here’s how I preach marathon series without losing parishioners in the process:

• Trust that God’s method of preserving Scripture in library form (meaning the Bible is made up of 66 individual books) conveys meaning differently than topical preaching–even topical exposition–does.
• Trust that, often, the verses selected for topical preaching serve a purpose found in the immediate context. This means God has a different reason for including those verses in the Canon than the preacher is giving in the topical sermon. We often only think of context providing meaning, but, in many cases, context provides purpose as well.
• Keep the series together by linking every sermon to the books theme/purpose. In the case of Luke’s Gospel, Luke wrote to help a friend be certain about what he had been taught about Christ and Christianity (cf. Luke 1:3-4). Virtually every sermon title began with, “Making Sure We…” These keeps relevance at the forefront of each individual sermon.
• Take strategic breaks for your sake and the sake of the congregation. My practice is to break a book like Luke in half (the same with Isaiah and its natural break around chapter 40). This break gives me time to preach on some things that are important to our faith-family, but not found in the particular book study. (It took 10 months to preach the first half of Luke, about 6 months to preach a series on the “one another’s” in the NT, and another 6 months to complete Luke.)

Before Sunday (and before the new year gets too old), I hope you will consider the value of preaching through a book of the Bible, no matter how long or short. Your congregants will be better for it.

Preach well for His glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (Eph. 3:21).

Randal