Bryan Chapell teaches the mechanics of expository preaching from the ground up: how to determine what a text actually says, how to find its Fallen Condition Focus, how to organize a sermon so that the structure serves the text rather than obscuring it, and how to deliver it. Running through all of it is his central argument, that no passage is rightly preached until its hearers are shown how it functions in God's redemptive work rather than merely what it requires of them.

Now in its third edition, updated and revised throughout, this has become one of the most widely assigned preaching texts in evangelical seminaries. The appendices are a working toolkit of their own - sample outlines, worksheets, a filing system, guidance on sermon introductions and conclusions - which is why the book tends to stay on the desk rather than the shelf after the course ends.