“At Many Times and in Various Ways”: Hebrews and the Hermeneutics of Exposition

Abstract

ABSTRACT A crucial hermeneutical issue for expository preaching is the relationship between the responsibility to teach the text (giving due acknowledgment to the “many” and “various” ways in which God spoke through the authors of Scripture) and the commission to preach Christ (who is “the same yesterday and today and forever”). In this article I explore the dynamics of that relationship through a series of case studies in the hermeneutical practices of the writer to the Hebrews. Within the larger hermeneutical framework established by the letter’s opening verses, I examine the various ways in which Scripture is quoted, echoed, explained, and applied in Hebrews 2:5–3:6, 3:7–4:13, and 12:1–13. What emerges from the study is not a single, inflexible rule but a warrant for the kind of expository preaching that is sensitive to the particularities of the biblical text (in both its content and its illocutionary force), cognisant of the circumstances of the hearers, and directed toward the goal of encouraging God’s people to hear and respond to the unchanging word spoken by God in his Son.