Expository teaching of God’s Word is the best and most profitable method of explaining the meaning of the text, and I mean profit in the sense of helpfulness to those who will be trying to implement God’s word into their lives.
The danger in teaching comes when we stray from the text and start to interject our own thoughts, ideas and inferences. Why? Because if we have a faulty exposition, which then leads to a faulty inference, we can end up building our lives on a series of inferences and not the clear teaching of God’s Word.
I think that the best policy concerning the teaching of God’s word with the goal of implementation is to practice, as much as possible, a position of non-inference. What is inference? Well, glad you asked.
inference is the means one uses to draw conclusions on any given topic by way of previous thinking that had been completed before. Whereas it is true that we make inferences every day from what people say, write and do, it is only the clear things that provide the structural capability necessary in order to carry the ‘weight’ of a life. And, inference based upon inference can be especially harmful if the original inference is faulty.
In the coming days, I will be updating this post with examples of this practice, as well as ways that we can recognize it in our own lives and pursue doing what we need to do individually.