As evangelicals, we love to describe our churches as “good, Bible-teaching churches”, well-pleased that our pastors preach solid, exegetical sermons—that we are the ‘Bible guys’. Yet we often leave our kids and youth ministry teams, our Bible study leaders, and others doing important word ministry to muddle their way through without much guidance or training on how to do it well.

But exegesis—reading out the meaning there in the text—is a critical process that anyone teaching God’s word to others can and should be thinking through. We must be mastered by the word before we wield it.

In Mastered by the Word, Craig Hamilton explains how to deeply and rightly read and understand the Bible by considering important issues such as context, genre, key words, Old Testament quotations, history, theology, and more. At the end of each step, he gives a masterclass on how to apply what has been covered by showing his working when exegeting the account in Mark 5 of Jesus’ interaction with the demon-possessed man.

Craig is passionate about equipping every Christian to uncover all they can from a passage of Scripture and become better teachers of God’s word. This step-by-step guide will take you by the hand so that what seems intimidating and only relevant for Bible college graduates becomes an intuitive process for all.

About the author

Craig Hamilton is a graduate of Moore Theological College, and is the senior minister at Pitt Town Anglican. He is the author of , and .

Table of contents

• Introduction
• The purpose of exegesis
• The process of exegesis
• Step 1: Testament context
• Step 2: Biblical theology context
• Step 3: Genre
• Step 4: My questions
• Step 5: Structural context
• Step 6: Geography
• Step 7: Connecting words
• Step 8: Key words and Old Testament quotations
• Step 9: Historical background
• Step 10: The big idea
• Step 11: Theology
• Step 12: Look out
• The posture of exegesis