Is Sufficiency that big of a deal?

Ed Stetzer recently interviewed a prominent American pastor regarding preaching.  Some of his statements about preaching seem to go against a strong view in the Sufficiency of Scripture.

I have already written on this subject a while ago here.

Let me be clear here, this post is NOT about topical preaching vs. expository preaching.  It is about the sufficiency of Scripture in regard to preaching.  This is the quote that prompted this blog post.  He said, “Guys that preach verse-by-verse through books of the Bible–that is just cheating.  It’s cheating because that would be easy, first of all.  That isn’t how you grow people.”

I disagree 100% with EVERY WORD of these 3 sentences.  It reeks of a lack of understanding and belief in the Sufficiency of Scripture.  Further, there is a total lack of understanding on how HARD, not easy, expositional or verse-by-verse preaching is.

Verse-by-verse preaching is not easy.  It is MORE difficult and requires MORE study and MORE precision to preach verse by verse.  It forces you to preach the passages you would never preach; that you might be scared to or “never get around to”.  That is NOT easy.  It forces you to understand every word  of Scripture, not just your favorites that you want to preach every week.  It requires you to be more precise with your words because you are talking about the deeps things and truths of Scripture, not just about everyday life.

Now, in his interview, he said that he doesn’t think this helps people grow.  He said, “That isn’t how you grow people“.  He would say you grow people by finding out their felt needs and addressing them in a contemporary, relevant way.
This is just a total lack of understanding in sufficiency.  IT’S NOT OUR WORDS THAT CHANGE PEOPLE!  People grow by God’s Word.

Sufficiency of Scripture is the belief that the Bible is totally sufficient to create within us the power to be changed by the Gospel of Jesus, grow into Christ-likeness and live a life of worship to Jesus.  Therefore, the congregation, as a whole, does NOT need my words, but God’s Words.  When we preach verse-by-verse, the Holy Spirit takes the taught Words of Scripture and convicts, teaches,reproofs, corrects, and trains us in righteousness (2 Tim 3:16).
That is how people grow.