9Marks Book Study Highlights: Chapter 1

So far our book study on 9 Marks of a Healthy Church has been terrific. We have been challenged and stretched in the way we view ministry and the methods we use to carry it out. We have seen God affirm in us, through this book, some of the recent changes in the style/format of the Foundation services and believe we are heading in the right direction. It just so happens that one of the major changes we made in our services happens to be the the first of the 9Marks according to Mark Dever; expositional preaching. We have committed to preaching and teaching the Word of God like never before. We are deliberately making the preaching and teaching of the Word as a central part of the Foundation Ministry and trust that God will be honored by that . Check out some key ideas we gathered from Chapter 1 of 9Marks:

Chapter 1:

• The first mark of a healthy church is expositional preaching.
• The main role of any pastor is expositional preaching.
• Expositional preaching contrasts with a topical sermon.
• A topical sermon begins with what the preacher wants to preach about.
• An expositional sermon makes the point of the message the point of a particular passage of Scripture.
• A pastor who doesn’t regularly preach expositionally will never preach more than they knew when they began the whole exercise.
• Pastors shouldn’t use Scripture as an excuse for what they already want to say.
• God’s Word is the instrument chosen by Him to bring life.
• The Word shows us what to believe.
• It is in Christ that the Word of God has fully and finally come to us.
• God’s Word not only gives us life; it also gives us direction and it keeps shaping and molding us in the image of the God who is speaking to us.
• All of us, by our sinful nature, are looking for ways to justify our sins against God. We want to know how we can defend ourselves from God’s charges. Therefore we are in desperate need to hear God’s Word brought honestly to us, so that we don’t just hear what we want to hear but rather hear what God has actually said.