[These are the notes of a sermon preached in 1983.  My Methodist upbringing, together with my reading of the Puritans and their successors such as Ryle and Spurgeon, had led me to assume the propriety of textual preaching.  Although I still think that there is a place for textual preaching, I do not regard the following effort as a shining example.  It’s a bit too ‘neat’.  Nevetheless, I am not ashamed of it.]

Acts 20:27 “I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.”…