Why We Preach Expositionally

This is a good reason why we use the expositional preaching style here at PRBC.

God’s Word gives clear primacy to exposition.

• Many preachers and pastors today question whether the Bible really gives us any reason to think that expositional preaching is the best way to preach.
• But the prophetic nature of preaching and the performative nature of God’s Word reveal exposition to be best suited to unleashing the power of the text.

Exposition is primary because preaching is prophetic.

• To say that preaching is prophetic is not to say that it is either predictive or ecstatic utterance – preachers are ambassadors, not prognosticators; and their source of revelation is God’s mediated written word, not His immediate verbal word. It is rather to say that preaching is about receiving God’s word and communicating it to God’s people in a way that is faithful to God’s intention.
• Preaching is prophetic because it conveys God’s Word to God’s people. Exposition best handles the prophetic nature of preaching because the expositional sermon is unique for taking the point of the passage as the point of the message. It is therefore the best way to remain faithful to the content and intent of God’s Word in any given text.

A Positive Example: Nehemiah 8:7-8

• …the Levites explained the law to the people while the people remained in their place. They read from the book, from the Law of God, translating to give the sense so that they understood the reading(Nehemiah 8:7-8).
• The content of their preaching is God’s revelation, not their own ideas. So their preaching is prophetic – they receive God’s word and give it to the people.
• The method of their preaching is to explain the meaning and significance of a portion of God’s Word to God’s people. This is the heart of expositional preaching.
• The effect of their preaching is that the people understand and obey. This is the goal of expositional preaching – that the people hear and heed the Word of God.

A Negative Example: Jeremiah 23:16,18, 21-22

• Thus says the Lord of hosts, “Do not listen to the words of the prophets who are prophesying to you. They are leading you into futility; They speak a vision of their own imagination, Not from the mouth of the Lord. But who has stood in the counsel of the Lord, that he should see and hear His word? Who has given heed to His word and listened? I did not send these prophets, but they ran. I did not speak to them, but they prophesied. But if they had stood in My council, then they would have announced My words to My people, and would have turned them back from their evil way and from the evil of their deeds” (Jer 23:16, 18, 21-22).
• The content of their preaching is from their own imagination. Speaking primarily from our own anecdotes and illustrations displeases God. Expositional preaching disciplines us to constrain our words to the parameters of God’s Word.
• The method of their preaching involves a refusal to stand in God’s council to hear and obey His word. An expositor’s first task is to stand in God’s counsel by bowing under God’s Word.
• The effect of their preaching fails to turn God’s people back to God’s ways, but rather lead them into futility. An expositor’s goal is to speak God’s Word to God’s people so that they will walk in God’s ways.

Exposition is primary because God’s Word is performative.

• God’s Word performs what it prescribes. It is its own power for accomplishing itself. If this is so, then exposition is primary because it best unleashes the performative intention of God’s Word on the lives and hearts of God’s people.
• When God speaks,His very word actually creates the reality that it commands. Six times in Genesis 1 we read: God said and it was so (1:6, 9, 11, 14, 24, 29-30).
• As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: it will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it (Isa 55:10-12).
• Look up the following verses. What is God’s Word doing, or able to do? John 17:17; Acts 12:24; 19:20; 1Thess 2:13; Heb 4:12; James 1:18, 21; 1Peter 1:23-25.

Taken from
www.9marks.org