For over a year, week after week, I sat through the Sunday services of a large fundamentalist Baptist church longing to hear the Word of God exegeted. Week after week I was disappointed. The messages that were presented were entertaining, political, sometimes humorous, but never sustentative and rarely faithful to the text that was the alleged basis for the sermon. Once a passage of Scripture was read one could kiss the Scriptures goodbye, so to speak, for they were never referenced again except in passing.

I believe there is a reason for the shallowness of modern day preaching in so many pulpits and that is a generation has arisen that has not been taught to read the Bible line upon line for precept upon precept. Because this is not done, the church, generally speaking, has moved away from the biblical pattern of causing the people to know the meaning of a text.

During the days of Nehemiah and Ezra, a group of men were trained to teach the people what the Scriptures meant. We read of these faithful men in the book of Nehemiah.

Nehemiah 8:6, "And Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God. And all the people answered, Amen, Amen, with lifting up their hands: and they bowed their heads, and worshipped the Lord with their faces to the ground. 7 Also Jeshua, and Bani, and Sherebiah, Jamin, Akkub, Shabbethai, Hodijah, Maaseiah, Kelita, Azariah, Jozabad, Hanan, Pelaiah, and the Levites, caused the people to understand the law: and the people stood in their place."

If many pastors are shallow in their preaching, fault may lie in their preparation for the ministry. Specifically, many Bible institutions, including seminaries, do not adequately train men for the work of gospel preaching. Many hours are spent on grand themes related to the Scriptures such as a systematic theology concerning the doctrine of God, Christology, the doctrine of salvation, anthropology, the doctrine of humanity; pneumatology, the doctrine of the spirit; eschatology, the doctrine of the “last things,” or the end of time; and ecclesiology, the doctrine of the church. Of course it is vital that such topics be thoroughly comprehended, but not at the neglect of actually reading the text of Scripture from Genesis to Revelation and examining each verse in context. This, I believe, is the missing dimension in much formal religious education and the negative results spill over in the pulpit presentation.

A way must be found for our Bible institutions to do more than give a history of the Old Testament or a Survey of the New Testament with assigned portions of Scripture readings being thrown in as a nod to God. No, no. We must do better. We must do more. We must have people reading the Bible in the classrooms slowly, carefully, and with understanding of the context and the content.

It does little good to say that time is against such a thorough investigation of the Bible and making it the main textbook of our Bible colleges and seminaries. Of course the Bible is said to be the main textbook of these religious institutions, but the dark secret is that the Bible is not read all that much, if the truth were known. I will invite you to see if this statement does not have validity by simply asking your pastor if he has ever read the Bible completely through. If he has been to some Bible training school or seminary, ask the pastor if he studied all of the Bible during the courses he was assigned or merely taught many important truths about the Bible.

The time has come for a new generation to find the Scriptures for surely they have been “lost” as completely as in the days of Nehemiah. The time has come for faithful men to cause the people of God to know the meaning of each verse of Scripture because they themselves know of what they speak.

Herein is a word of exhortation for the church: “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” (2 Tim 2:15).