Why We Prioritize Expositional Preaching (Part 2)

Last week I laid out six reasons our church prioritizes expositional preaching as opposed to topical preaching. I borrowed Mark Dever's definition, explaining that expositional preaching is simply "making the main point of the text the main point of the sermon." This week I want to offer six additional reasons our pastors have chosen this method as the primary way to feed the Word to the people of Fellowship Baptist Church.

7. Expositional preaching gives all the Bible to all of the church for all of life. The doctrine of Scripture’s inspiration connects the truth that God breathed all scripture with its purpose in the believer’s life. Because God spoke all Scripture, the whole Bible helps the believer in his whole life, providing teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness (2 Timothy 3:16-17). Only expositional preaching is concerned with walking through all sections of the Bible, rather than only teaching what the Bible says about predetermined topics (not a bad thing in itself) or worse, using a couple of verses as footnotes in an inspirational talk.

8. Expositional preaching most matures the pastors. Do you want your pastors to study new sections of the Bible each week, in detail? Then you should love expository preaching, especially sequential preaching that takes our church through whole books of the Bible. This commitment forces them to study sections of the Bible that they honestly would never touch if they were not next in line. This is why I wrote last week that a topical sermon is a good thing as long as it is being preached by an expositional preacher. Do you really want a sermon on Christian doctrine or the Christian life from someone that hasn’t read his entire Bible? I certainly do not. Do you want to be fed the Word by a pastor who avoids studying large chunks of Scripture he finds difficult? No thank you. If you want mature pastors, you should want an expositional ministry that creates mature pastors.

9. Expositional preaching ensures maximum relevance.  It may feel more relevant to start with what our culture is most concerned about and write sermons that always attempt to connect those concerns with the Bible. And sometimes, situations arise that force us to do this with sin issues, or with doctrinal teachings. But to assume the next hot thing in our culture is most relevant to the people of God (whether that be trauma, productivity, success, self-betterment, or toxicity) assumes we know more about what we need than God does. If we primarily let the Bible, and the way in which it was written, in the way it came to us in books, set the agenda for the church, we are prioritizing how God has chosen to give his message to us and working toward application, not starting with application and attempting to quote God’s Word along the way. The problem with beginning felt needs and find a verse or a Bible story to go along with the sermon is that (1) we may misuse the text to make it fit and (2) our felt needs may not be our real needs anyway. Our all-knowing Creator who made us authored the Bible, so this Word taught as it has been given will always be most relevant.

10. Expositional preaching ensures balance in the pulpit. If we could always decide what to preach each week, you would get all the imbalances of the pastors’ personalities and opinions. When the actual content of the Bible sets the tone it puts up divine guardrails to limit this sort of thing. Of course as a minister I know that I can still be unbalanced in how I deliver a sermon: even an exposition can have too much David and not enough Scripture. But from my own life experience, and after preaching for fifteen years, I would argue exposition makes this error much harder even if it doesn’t render the error impossible. Sometimes we need to hear things addressed that arise, things that require pastors to weigh in - but no matter how sanctified a pastor is, if whatever happens to be on his mind becomes the weekly diet of the church the menu will quickly become unhealthy.

11. Expositional preaching is the only kind of preaching that is coherent with the sufficiency of Scripture. One of the great doctrines that was recovered during the reformation was the sufficiency of Scripture: the teaching that in God’s Word we have all we need for salvation and holy living. Because of God’s common grace, Christians may find some helpful truths in other places, but never anything that is essential for your soul. Of course, this week someone will text you about a new self-help book, or email you a TED talk and say something like “You absolutely need this!” But if you are a Christian with a Bible, you don’t really need any of those things to stand before God. Some of those may be useful gifts, but they are not required to enable you to live as a faithful Christian. This is the essence of the theology of the Bible’s sufficiency.  I must say, I have never once heard of a church that emphasized the sufficiency of Scripture that did not offer a steady diet of solid expositional preaching. And I have never known a church with weak topical preaching explain and defend the doctrine of sufficiency. This is not a coincidence. If we believe in this doctrine it makes sense to teach through whole books of the Bible. If God's Word has everything we need, why not teach as much of it as possible to God's people?

12. Expositional preaching best displays the headship of Jesus over the church. The pastors are under-shepherds, but Scripture teaches Christ is the head of the church (Ephesians 1:22-23). Since all of the Old Testament is a witness to Jesus (Luke 24:25-27) and all the of New Testament is a witness to Jesus (John 16:12-15) it makes sense to choose exposition. Christ is our head - not the culture, not an earthly agenda, not a man or team of men - but Christ himself. And the Bible is all about Christ. So, you should demand pastors that study the whole Bible, and desire to teach the whole Bible, in its context, and on its own terms. The term used to describe this practice is expositional preaching.