# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1859_S211
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On Bible Sermons. 211

...to neglect that and spend the little time on it, especially since the
most necessary passages are repeated in the fifth book of Moses.

Should a preacher have progressed thus far, let him go on with the
exposition of the following books.

As for the book of Job, I would advise summarizing its purpose from
Dr. Luther's preface and expounding only the first two chapters and the
last, reserving a free period at the close of a church year for this.

An exclusive exposition of the Psalter in sequence I could not well
approve, because in doing so the whole historical portion of the Old
Testament, and the greater part of the New, would be left behind, and thus
much that our congregations need more urgently to know would be left
unattended for a long time. Instead I would advise dividing the whole
Psalter, according to Dr. Luther's summaries, into five main classes —
prophetic, doctrinal, comfort, prayer, and thanksgiving psalms — and each
of these classes again into three others, according to the degree of their
importance, and from this forming a threefold course, so that in the first
the most important, in the second the more important, and in the third the
remaining psalms of each of the five main classes would be expounded —
courses which of course would have to be distributed over several years.

If, without neglecting the historical books of the Old Testament and
alongside the exposition of a book of the New Testament, one could also
spare time for the Prophets, one would probably preach above all on
Isaiah. Now, in order nevertheless to expound at least something from
the Psalms and Prophets, I have taken the following course. I preach
every year during Advent, in sequence, on the foremost prophecies of the
Old Testament from Moses to Malachi, reading one after another during
the sermon and explaining them now at greater length, now more briefly.
Besides this I have, in confessional addresses, treated for three years
individual texts from almost all the chapters of the prophet Isaiah, and
for just as long, sayings from the first forty-six Psalms.

That finally, after the exposition of all the books of the Old Testament,
the apocryphal ones too — but only then — should be undertaken, is all
the less open to doubt, since the Church herself has appointed individual
passages of them, e.g. Sirach 15:28 and the Book of Wisdom 5:1–12, as
epistle pericopes.

In the weekly sermons on the New Testament one should alternate
between the historical books and the epistles, which have nearly the same
number of chapters, in such a way that after one or several epistles,
containing roughly 20–30 chapters, a Gospel or the Acts of the Apostles
is allowed to follow, etc. In the Gospels one should, following Dr.
Luther's example, pass over the customary Sunday pericopes and those
festival pericopes on which, besides this, a sermon is preached either on
the feast itself or on the