I speak now from an old age perspective, from fifty years of teaching and preaching and hearing others do the same. The best preachers and teachers of the word of God are those who fill their lessons with citations from scripture and less commentary. When I was younger I thought a sermon consisted of reading a text or portion of scripture and then spending the rest of the time commenting upon it. But, now I say that the best sermons have more scripture and less commentary. No one is saved by hearing my words or commentary but by hearing the word of God. I am not condemning commentary and exegesis, but only saying that there should be more word of God than word of commentary. This is especially true since so many people today are biblically illiterate. I think now that if I had 45 minutes to give a homily, that I would be better off just reading scripture and making only those comments which help the audience understand in their own language what is read from scripture. Elder Sarber is very good at this.
The early church often met just to hear the word of God read. That was mainly due to people having few personal copies of the scripture. Still, I would love for churches to get back to hearing scripture read.
Some preachers are good at reading scripture, knowing where to pause, where to emphasize, etc.
What think ye?
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