Perhaps you’ve heard the sentiment often repeated by seminary students: the sermon you preach in your seminary class you wouldn’t dare preach in your church, and the sermon you preach in your church you wouldn’t dare preach in your homiletics class.
Unfortunately, there’s often a great amount of truth to this. To be certain, I’ve sat through student sermons that seemed to aim more at the academic hall than the average church setting for which I’ve been familiar. And, of course, sermons preached in a classroom often (but not always—who am I to judge?) have the ultimate goal of pleasing a preaching professor for a good grade.
Nevertheless, seminaries still graduate good preachers every year. Yet if a pastor were to preach sermons along the lines of classroom preaching or academic papers written while in school, a congregation might struggle. When studying a passage from the Bible, a pastor cannot present content in the same manner as reflected in many of the standard Bible commentaries—as good as they are. Any good pastor must know “how to get the hay down out of the loft onto the barn floor where the cows can get at it” as famed preacher Donald Grey Barnhouse supposedly said.
This “getting the hay down out of the loft” can be time consuming at times, especially for the pastor with an already-full schedule. This, of course, is where preaching commentaries become very helpful. Good preaching commentaries should be used alongside other commentaries, not as sermons to be preached, but rather as guides that alert the pastor to the rhetorical aspects of a biblical passage. Preaching commentaries help with finding practical application from a biblical passage that squares with the experience and needs of church members.
Thus, we’re pleased to announce one of the most trusted preaching commentaries, available beginning today for the Accordance Bible Software Library. Edited by Lloyd J. Ogilve, the 35-volume Preacher’s Commentary series has been trusted by pastors for three and a half decades. This series brings together both scholarship and sensitivity to the needs of preaching the Bible—all in one commentary series. As stated in the preface…
Many current commentaries and Bible study guides provide only some aspects of a communicator’s needs. Some offer in-depth scholarship but no application to daily life. Others are so popular in approach that biblical roots are left unexplained. Few offer compelling illustrations that open windows for the reader to see the exciting application for today’s struggles. And most of all, seldom have the expositors given the valuable outlines of passages so needed to help the preacher or teacher in his or her busy life to prepare for communicating the Word to congregations or classes.
This Preacher’s Commentary series brings all of these elements together. The authors are scholar-preachers and teachers outstanding in their ability to make the Scriptures come alive for individuals and groups. They are noted for bringing together excellence in biblical scholarship, knowledge of the original Greek and Hebrew, sensitivity to people’s needs, vivid illustrative material from biblical, classical, and contemporary sources, and lucid communication by the use of clear outlines of thought. Each has been selected to contribute to this series because of his Spirit-empowered ability to help people live in the skins of biblical characters and provide a “you-are-there” intensity to the drama of events of the Bible which have so much to say about our relationships and responsibilities today.
Click/tap the image above for a larger view of the Preacher’s Commentary in Accordance 12. NKJV with Strong’s Numbers available separately.
With names like Lloyd Ogilve, Maxie Dunham, Stuart Briscoe, David Hubbard, and others, The Preacher’s Commentary series offers a “best of both worlds” approach. This is a commentary series that pastors can depend on for getting to the heart of a passage with just the right amount of help so that they can create sermons with power and impact.
Although based primarily on the New King James Version, Accordance users can pair the Preacher’s Commentary with any biblical text or translation–or as many as needed, for that matter. And Accordance Mobile allows a busy pastor to carry the entire sermon series on an iPhone or iPad for study on the go in any situation! If you preach or teach regularly, you will want to add The Preacher’s Commentary to your personal Accordance Library today.
The Preacher’s Commentary
Regular Price $539