No cookbook begins with a definition of cooking. The author assumes anyone reading a cookbook knows what cooking is. What they seek is how to do it, so the emphasis is rightly placed on the pragmatic rather than the theoretical. Every book on expository preaching, however, inevitably begins with a proprietary definition of expository preaching. Every author adds some specific nuance and emphasis that negates every other definition of exposition in every other book. One of those nuances that I notice authors and homileticians emphasize with great frequency and adamance is something like “the main point of the text should be the main point of the sermon.” As reasonable as that sounds, I am just as adamant that it is wrong.

First, authors are frequently doing more than one thing with a text. To flatten the text to a single main point is to deny the multiple intentions that the author (or the speaker) had and to fail to preach many of them. For example, one might argue that the main point of Jesus’ three stories about lostness in Luke 15 was his rebuke of the Pharisees. That seems reasonable and contextual enough. But was He not also teaching something about the heart of the Father? Was He not explaining that the priority of heaven is searching for the lost rather than maintaining the righteous? Would it not be acceptable to preach on one of those “sub-points” so long as the main point were at least revealed?

Second, Jesus Himself used Scripture to teach truths that were hardly the main point of the passage. Surely the main point of God’s appearance to Moses in the burning bush recorded in Exodus 3 was God’s call of Moses and His promise to deliver his enslaved people from Egypt. But in Luke 20:37-38, Jesus refers to that passage (which he calls “the passage about the bush”) as evidence of life beyond death because God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who are living and not dead. He makes a similar move with the question about divorce in Matthew 19 in which he refers to God’s design in Genesis 2 as the basis for permanence in marriage. Genesis 2 is certainly about creation but also has something to say about marriage and divorce.

Third, the apostles frequently cited passages with implications and applications other than their most obvious meaning. Matthew, especially, sees Jesus “fulfilling” stories and events of the Old Testament that no one ever previously cited as a messianic promise. Every preacher expositing such a passage is faced with the dual difficulty of explaining the original and obvious meaning and the New Testament citation and fulfillment which could be quite different (as in “Out of Egypt have I called my son” in Hosea 11:1 and Matthew 2:19–20). I can easily envision two expositors justifiably claiming two different main points in both texts.

Ultimately, exposition is the work of a pastor and a pastor’s great desire is to teach the congregation not merely the meaning of an individual passage, but also how to read and understand the entire Bible for themselves. That is why I suggest a simple thing I call “truth in labeling.” The preacher simply needs to let the congregation in on what he is doing.

If the preacher will at least call attention to the main point of the text even if the focus of the sermon is a subpoint of the passage, the congregation will learn how to study the Bible accurately and contextually. To say something like, “Don’t miss that the main point in Luke 15 is Jesus’ rebuke of the Pharisees because they are angry that Jesus is hanging out with sinners, but as He rebukes them, Jesus gives us one of the greatest insights into the heart of the Father found in Scripture, and that is what we want to think about today.”

In this way, we acknowledge and maintain authorial intent, but also teach the richness and texture of Scripture beyond a single main point. Furthermore, a preacher can justifiably preach multiple sermons out of the same text because he is showing multiple layers of truths that they teach. We should always call attention to the main point of the text so that no one is confused about it, but showing the richness and the depth of the passage as it teaches other things as well is a wonderful and necessary way to teach the congregation to study the Bible for themselves.

Hershael W. York is Dean of the School of Theology and the Victor and Louise Lester Professor of Christian Preaching at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.