Dr. Andrew Davis, here in this message, explains the biblical doctrine of expository preaching. 

Take your Bibles and look at me if you would at Luke chapter 4. And I'll bring you to one of the most dramatic moments in redemptive history. I frequently ask my kids, you know, if you could go back in time and be somewhere in Bible times, you know, what would you go back and see? And there's so many exciting moments, you know, I'd like to be on the Ark for a little while anyway, you know, not the whole time, you know, after a while that might get a little old, or to be in the furnace with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, an incredible experience that was. But how about this in Luke chapter 4, when Jesus began his public ministry in his hometown?

And after his temptation, his baptism and temptation in the just beginning of his ministry, he comes to his hometown in Nazareth, and it's quite a dramatic moment. They get the scroll of Isaiah the prophet and Jesus stands up to teach and he rolls out the scroll and he finds the place where it's written, The Spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. Then he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him and he began by saying to them today in your hearing This scripture is fulfilled Now what kind of word is that Fulfilled Do you think they puzzled over that word?

This was messianic prophecy. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because the Lord has anointed me. What is he claiming? Is he claiming to be the Messiah? Today in your hearing, this scripture is fulfilled.

And it says, All spoke well of him and were amazed at the words of grace that were coming from his lips. Now, I think there was more going on than is recorded here. That's a constant theme of Scripture is there's always more than was recorded in Scripture. And if you keep that in mind, you're going to avoid a lot of problems of seeming contradiction or later passages that give us more information. Like there's three accounts of the conversion of Saul of Tarsus, and each one gives us a little more insight, none of them contradictory, none of them complete, but each of them sufficient for what God wants us to know.

And so I think Jesus preached expositionally from Isaiah at that point, and there were gracious words, or words of grace coming from his lips, and the people were amazed. That's the beginning of his public ministry. What a dramatic moment. Of course, it doesn't end well that day, as he gave a hint that the Gentiles were going to be receiving grace from God. And that was not a popular theme under the thumb of the Romans at that point.

But Jesus wasn't concerned about being popular. He wanted to tell the truth. Go to the end in Luke 24. This is the end of his public ministry as recorded in Luke's gospel, and we have the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. That would be another competitor for, boy, I would love to have been there when that happened.

What privileges were given to these two unnamed disciples on the road to Emmaus after Jesus' physical resurrection from the dead, when mysterious powers were at work and people who knew him well didn't recognize him until he revealed himself to them. And so these two disciples were walking with this stranger, downcast, walking with the risen Lord, discouraged in the presence of the resurrected Christ. How can it be? They didn't know who he was. And he didn't seem to know what had happened.

He didn't seem to know the basic facts about Jesus of Nazareth who was a prophet, mighty in power and who did all these incredible things and he had been shockingly arrested and now put to death and now there are these stories, these accounts that he has risen from the dead some of the women had seen him and they did these two disciples didn't know what to make of it all and here's this stranger and the stranger opens his mouth and says how foolish you are and How slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory? And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the scriptures concerning himself. Note the words all there. It's in there twice. Beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the scriptures concerning himself.

Now I don't think that that is literally true, that everything that the Old Testament said about the Messiah he explained as they were walking along the road. We know that he had 40 days to spend with the apostles before his ascension to heaven, and he continued along the same theme. But I think he gave them a taste of it, a sense of the comprehensiveness of what was taught in the scriptures, so that they could understand from the scripture that he had to suffer, from the scripture that he had to die, from the scripture that he had to be risen from the dead on the third day, that their faith would be rooted in the scripture. This is another example, though not openly given to us, of exposition of Scripture. And so as they're going along, as they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus acted as if he were going further.

But they urged him strongly, stay with us, for it is nearly evening. The day is almost over. So he went in to stay with them. And when he was at the table with them, he took bread and gave thanks and broke it and began to give it to them. And then their eyes were opened and they recognized him and he disappeared from their sight.

And I love what they say at this moment. They asked each other, Were not our hearts burning within us? While he talked with us on the road and opened the scriptures to us. That's expositions, an opening up of the Scriptures. Now notice in Luke chapter 4, the reaction of the people is amazement at the words of grace that were coming from his lips.

Note the reaction here at the end of Luke, Luke 24. Their hearts burning, not because they knew themselves To be in the presence of the resurrected Christ they didn't it's because of the power of the scripture as It testified to these things and that power is still with us today. I say brothers, it's with us here in this very room now. And that is a powerful thing, isn't it? The power of the scripture to testify to the Christ, to the fact that the Spirit of the Lord was upon him and the Lord had anointed him to preach good news to the poor and to set at liberty those who are captive.

And Jesus said, today in your hearing as you listen to me explaining Isaiah, it's being fulfilled. You're being set free. You're being saved. I, the Messiah, am here to do this work. And his work is intimately connected to the text of scripture.

And he knew it. Constantly teaching the Word of God. So what is exposition? That's what we're going to talk about today. I could spend the whole time just unfolding scripture.

I will the next time I speak to you God willing just preach an expository sermon, but this is a talk This is not an expository sermon and so I'm going to be talking to you about this question What is exposition? But I think it's best to look at the example of Christ and how I'd both the beginning in the end of his ministry he did exposition and to look at the reaction and the parts of the people who heard him amazement at grace hearts burning within them and God yearns for this in the hearts of our people He yearns for it in our children, our wives. He yearns for it in the church. He wants people's hearts to be filled with amazement at what God is doing so that we can worship him. That exposition can produce worship in the hearts of people that we would honor and magnify the greatness of God through Christ, and that our hearts would be ignited with love for him and a burning zeal to see his name glorified, and that we would be faithful and active in whatever good works he's given us to do, that that Fire actually is a fire within us to move, us to action, and to serve Him.

And so that's Luke. I'm going to be talking to you today about expository preaching. And I want to begin this aspect of my message with some observations that John Piper made in 1994 at a talk he gave at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Preaching as Worship is the name of his talk. Meditations on Expository Exaltation.

It is my great privilege as a preacher to exalt over God over passages of scripture. To just celebrate God, his greatness, his attributes, the magnificence of his person. To just get over the text of scripture and celebrate who God is. So he's meditating on that and this is what he said. He began talking about new trends in God-centered, contemporary Christian worship.

But then he turned to assess what was going on in the pulpit in connection with that. Now concerning contemporary worship, it's a bit of a divisive topic, but we can acknowledge this, that there are more and more songs these days that are not fluff in their lyrics, but actually are very God-centered and very scripture-centered, et cetera, and that they bring glory to God when you sing them. And he was observing that. And this is what he said. My observation is that the preaching that follows this new God-centered music is, in most churches, has moved in exactly the opposite direction from the musical worship awakening.

While the worship songs have moved God-ward, preaching has moved man-ward. While the worship songs focus our attention again and again on the character of God and the great works of God, preaching focuses on contemporary issues, personal problems, relationships. While the worship songs lift us up into the presence of God, preaching gives it advice on how to get along better on earth. No one would say today the same thing about preaching that we have seen in the worship awakening, namely that there has been a great resurgence of God-centeredness or a great moving of the spirit of God-wardness in the pulpit or a focus on God's character and mighty acts in the preaching of evangelicalism. Rather, I think most would agree that preaching has moved in the other direction.

It is more relational, anecdotal, humorous, casual, laid back, absorbed in human need, fixed on relational dynamics, heavily saturated with psychological categories, wrapped up in strategies for emotional healing. One aspect of the explanation is that God-centered lyrics of the worship songs have one great advantage over preaching. They're accompanied by heart-engaging music. The words would never in themselves hold the interests of the worshippers and never release the affections for God that they do in connection with the music. Therefore, one might say the Music is what makes God-centered lyrics palatable to contemporary evangelicals who are basically atheological, and who would not be stirred by them without the moving music.

Without the music, the words would be considered dry, irrelevant, distant, unengaging. Or we can put it more generously than that, we could say to the degree that the tunes are pleasing and stirring and heart engaging, the worshiper is generally opened to at least some of the significance of the truth about God himself and indeed brought to experience the reality of that very God. Almost every preacher, and rightly so, wants to accomplish what music accomplishes. We want to move the heart. We want to stir the emotions as well as to stock the mind.

We want to awaken heartfelt affections as well as win intellectual assent. And right here, many preachers, I fear, make a fateful, mistaken judgment. They reason, since I do not have music to accompany in my preaching, I cannot with a God-centered message hold or move the hearts of my people and engage their emotions. Doctrine and theological portraits of God, a focus on his supremacy, a spirit of transcendence will simply not hold and move a contemporary audience, not without music to sustain the mood. What holds a contemporary audience verbally is not a message about God, but a message about divorce, or drugs, or parenting, or anger, or success, or abuse, or intimacy, or depression.

In other words, the common strategy of preachers today for awakening people's emotions and engaging their hearts is to find areas of human life where the emotions are already running high, where hearts are already engaged. And then we root the sermons there, the pain in the marriage, the anguish of wayward teenagers, the stress at work, the power of sexual temptation, the breakdown of community, the woundedness of past abuses, the absence of intimacy and vulnerability. We preachers know that if we plant our sermons here, if we tend this garden with modest skill and anecdote and illustration and some personal vulnerability, We will move the hearts of our hearers. We will accomplish what the worship tunes accomplish. Our listeners will experience the good feelings of empathy, and we will feel the satisfaction of attentive, resonating faces." End quote.

Well, that's all analysis, and I think it's true. But let's remember what it says in Luke 24. Were not our hearts burning within us when he opened the Scriptures to us? In Luke 4, They were amazed at the words of grace that were coming from his lips. So I'm not advocating that preachers get a band behind them to play while they're preaching, get the music going and see if we can sync the music to the preaching.

I think The Word of God is sufficient for this. I think it's a desirable thing. When I have the chance to speak tomorrow, God willing, on some great expositors of the past, I'm going to mention Martyn Lloyd-Jones, and I'll mention them. But he believed that good preaching was logic on fire. And so you reason with people from the scriptures.

You bring forth truth from the scriptures. But the fire, that's got to do with passion. It's got to do with emotion and feeling. We're not to be left in the same place we were at. We're supposed to be moved, we're supposed to be amazed, we're supposed to have our hearts burning within us when we hear the Word of God.

And I believe that the Scripture is sufficient for it. Now as we come to the question of expository preaching, I want to consider with you the wisdom of God in all of this. How wise is our God? It says in Romans 16 at the end of that great epistle, Romans 16, and Scott I was shocked to find that I preached 14 sermons in Romans 9. I couldn't believe it.

Yeah, you told me this the other day, I said, was it that many? But I wasn't trying for a number of sermons, whatever. I was just trying to be faithful to go through that incredibly deep chapter. But at the end of that book, Romans 16, it says, now to him who is able to establish you by my gospel in the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past, but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God so that all nations might believe and obey him. Notice that all nations believe and obey is rooted in the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God.

That's how it happens. To the only wise God be glory forever through Jesus Christ. Amen. So let's celebrate together the wisdom of God in his methods in saving the human soul. He has given us the Scripture, he's given us a book, he's given us the Word of God, and in his wisdom it is by unfolding the scripture, by speaking the words of God that people are brought from death to life spiritually, they're brought from immaturity to maturity spiritually, by preaching faithfully the word of God and see the wisdom of God.

Now what do I mean by the wisdom of God? I'm going to mention this in my sermon on Sunday. I have a joy of preaching two sermons on the cross leading up to Easter. I've always wanted... I was raised Roman Catholic myself and I always kind of pondered over the whole Palm Sunday, Easter Sunday thing.

Palm Sunday celebrates a kind of a ambivalent event in the life of Christ, you know, the triumphal entry. And it's of certain interest, but it's hard to preach a Palm Sunday sermon year after year after year. I'm in my 10th year now as preacher at FBC. I don't know that I'd have ten Palm Sunday sermons. And it leaves you wondering, I think the resurrection we can preach forever.

There's so many themes connected with the resurrection, no doubt about that. But where's the cross? And then you could say, well, every week is the cross. We can't really, in some sense it should be. But I'm going to preach two sermons on the cross leading up to Resurrection Sunday.

I'm excited about that. But I'm going to talk about how the cross of Christ reveals, displays the glories of God, the perfections of God, the attributes of God. One of them is wisdom, the wisdom of God. 1 Corinthians 1 says that the cross of Christ is the wisdom of God. Now what do I mean by wisdom?

I think there are two aspects to God's wisdom. One is to choose the proper destination for the journey, and secondly to choose the best way to get there. Both of those are aspects of the wisdom of God, and that works day to day, it works for your whole life. Day to day, wisdom tells you what is the best way to spend your day, and what is, you know, your best goals for your day, and then the best way to go about it. Both of those things.

So the best destination and then the best way to get at it. Now, some time ago a generous friend in the church gave me one of those little GPS navigational things for my car, you know, with the suction cup, six on the windshield and all that. And it's really been very helpful, especially going to unfamiliar places. The first time I had it, I put up on the windshield and I checked it to see if I could change lanes. That's a bad bad idea, okay?

It's not a rear-view mirror. That's what you check the rear-view mirror for that. So there's only certain things it's good for, okay? There's a limit, all right? And it's also somewhat distracting.

So it's a mixed thing there. But the GPS, it's amazing, almost eerie, the knowledge it has of even very minor roads. And it can tell you remarkably how to get where you want to go. One thing though that this machine cannot do is it cannot tell you where you should go. You can't ask this little black box, say, what should my final destination be today?

There's no way to type that in and it wouldn't know what to tell you. It's like, do you want a restaurant? Do you want, I mean, you have to tell it and then it'll tell you how to get there, etc. God will tell us both. What is the destination and how best to get there?

Now what is the destination of human history? What is the ultimate highest end? And the ultimate highest end is his own glory, and it can be nothing else. That God would be glorified, that his nature would be revealed, his perfections would be displayed and made manifest, and that we, his created beings, intelligent, created in his image, should celebrate those attributes, that we should delight in them. That's his ultimate end.

That's, as Jonathan Edwards said, the chief end, or the end for which God created the world. Well, the wisdom of God also consists in knowing the best means to that perfect end. God shows the tiny steps and also the great leaps of history. He knows how to assemble a universe from atoms. And Scott, I'll never think of the word atom the same way again.

Thank you, brother. I had never noticed that before. That's great. That which cannot be cut, I guess. That's what the Greeks thought.

So, he knows how to do that. And he also knows how to assemble a tapestry of history from single strands of seemingly insignificant incidents. God can do that. So you end up with a magnificent tapestry of history. God knows how to make the big picture out of little things.

He knows how to do all of that. Isaiah 14 says, this is the plan determined for the whole world. This is the hand stretched out over all nations. For the Lord Almighty has purposed, and who can thwart him? His hand is stretched out, and who can turn it back?

God has a plan, purpose for the whole world and for all of human history. And he knows what to do. And so God has given us not only the end but the means to the end. And Therefore I believe it is irreverent, it is arrogant for us to think that we can get to the ultimate and our own way, that we can figure out the best way to get there. God has given us this book with all of its details, all of its clear, strong teachings and its minor little details and all of the the beauties of the 66 books of the Bible he's given it to us because we need it and So rightly I think Scott focuses in this conference and in many aspects of his ministry on the sufficiency of Scripture We don't need anything else but its partner is the necessity of scripture.

We do need it, all that he's given. And I think that's important when you come to expositional preaching because the problem with the topical approach, we'll talk about the various approaches you can take is you're basically saying we don't need this, don't need that, don't need the other, this is what we need. So basically we've said we only need some of this book. So the necessity of Scripture is important for exposition, you see. We need it all.

We need it all. Or else God wouldn't have given it to us. As I said, he has not given us a complete record of anything. There's not a single thing for which he's given us an exhaustive, complete record. Even John tells us that if everything had been written about Jesus' life, the whole world wouldn't be able to contain the books.

We don't have an exhaustive and complete record, but we do have an accurate and perfect record. We have enough. But what he has given us, we need. And I think it's arrogant for a preacher to say, look, I'll go my own way to get to the ultimate end, the glory of God. I know how to do it.

We don't know how to do it. We were born yesterday and know nothing and so therefore exposition is the best means to the end as well We have been given a mandate to preach. We've been told what to do We don't have to work all these things out to the infinite depth. Just do what we're told as preachers What has he told us to do? 2nd Timothy and the things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses and trust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.

2 Timothy 4, too, preach the word, be ready in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and instruction. Titus 2.1, but as for you, speak the things which are fitting for sound doctrine. 1 Timothy 4.13, until I come, give attention to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation and to teaching. He's told us what to do. We don't have to wonder about it.

Preach the word, read the scriptures publicly, teach what they say. Great patience and careful instruction, he says. And preaching also is central to worship. We must worship God, that's what we are, that's what he is doing. He's creating God-centered worshippers out of people who used to be idol worshipers.

That's all of us. And preaching is central to that. Worship, I think, has been rightly defined as revelation and response. God reveals, we respond. He shows something of himself, and we respond.

Been meditating much recently on the nature of heaven. After reading Randy Alcorn's book, Heaven, a fascinating book, a little long, okay, I was saying to somebody it's like making 300 sandwiches with one jar of mayonnaise, you know, after a while, you know, scraping. Part of the problem is you go to God, hopefully God-saturated imagination, you're going to do a lot of speculation about heaven. But it has caused me to look a little more carefully at some passages that I just read. And one of the things Randy Alcorn's working on all the time is that we would not have a static view of heaven.

It's not a static, boring place. You know, where all of us, each of us thinking identical thoughts, looking identical to one another are in some kind of white room looking at something brilliant and just enjoying it forever. You know? I mean, that's, you know, truth be told, most of us aren't too thrilled about that. You know, we're like, it's just kind of very flat, you know?

It's like, But I guess we'll be changed and like it, kind of like lobotomized or something like that. The need for variety is gone. But I was thinking, that cannot be. It doesn't seem God's way. I think God would be even more creative in the next world No, we're not under the curse anymore.

And you know what gave there some indications in Revelation 22 there is this throne in the center of the city and the river of the water of life flowing Clear as crystal from the throne Flowing is movement Where does the water come from friends Isn't there kind of a conservation of matter here? I mean, where does it come from? Does it go into the throne? No, it's coming from the throne. So that means that God is creating it all the time That's very provocative for me about the future world.

God is a creative being and it's not gonna be boring And by the way, where's the water go? The big mystery It makes me want to go out of the gates of the city and go find out what the new earth looks like. It's going somewhere, just like out of Genesis 2 the headwaters going from Eden broke into four headwaters and went off who knows where into this beautiful wide world to be explored. It's exciting. See, I see you smiling.

See, you're like, man, I want to be there. You're going to be there through faith in Christ. It's exciting. But worship is all about God reveals himself and then we respond and we're going to be doing that forever. The throne is going to be at the center and he will reveal himself.

And so also now, good worship consists in the revelation of God from the text of scripture, revealing what God is like and then we respond with heartfelt praise and thanks. That's great worship. That's the way it should be. The kind of preaching that does this is God-centered preaching. Again, John Piper puts it this way, therefore we ask, as every preacher must ask, who knows this aim of preaching, how can I awaken the slumbering passions of God's people for the surpassing worth of knowing God and his son Jesus Christ?

How can I kindle the flame of knowledge and faith that says, there is none like Christ? There is no treasure, no pleasure, no perk, no profit, no prize, no reward, no wife, no child like Christ. How can I do that? How can I awaken a fire inside that says for me to live is Christ and to die is gain? How shall we preach to beget and sustain such a passion for God?

And the answer is at least this. In our preaching we must display from Scripture week in and week out the glories of God in Christ. It won't do briefly to say that Christ is great or that our mission is to glorify God and then hasten on to speak of other things. Oh, how many preachers and pulpits and teachers in Christian colleges and seminaries and Christian counselors account for their God-neglecting sermons and syllabi and sessions by saying, well, God is the foundation of all we say. We assume that.

We take it for granted. But more and more I've come to believe that God does not like to be taken for granted. The whole point of the creation of the universe is to display the glories of God. The heavens are telling the glories of God. Day unto day pours forth speech.

The point of the incarnation is display God the point of preaching is to display God the analogy of God is a foundation Is an utterly inadequate analogy to account for how God relates to our work, so I've heard Piper say you know can you imagine bringing friends who are, I want to come, I want to show you my foundation. Come and look with me down in the crawl space. Isn't it nice? I mean, he's doing such a good job holding up the house, you know? God is foundation, And I think there are scriptures that do talk about that, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, but he's everything.

And I think he wants to be exalted and glorified. So what kind of preaching do we need? That which has the proper end and also the proper means to the end. Proper end that God would be glorified, revealed as a glorious being. And the proper means to the end, exposition of the text of scripture, the Bible is given for precisely that.

So our job is to explain the scriptures. Now, what are the different kinds of preaching there are? Well, you've heard many different kinds. There's anecdotal preaching, which is preaching based primarily on the recounting of stories which convey a moral lesson. There's biographical preaching, preaching that provides a biography of a person and draws moral lessons from the person's life.

There's topical preaching, where the minister decides on a topic and then searches scripture for biblical texts applicable to that topic. There's textual preaching that refers to a passage of scripture but does not use the main point of the text as the main point of the sermon or the minor points of the text as the minor point of the sermon, but basically gets a general idea from the text and goes with it. And then there's expositional preaching. That preaching that takes the point of the text as the point of the sermon, and the supporting points of the text as the supporting points also of the sermon. That's what exposition is.

And American preaching is in trouble. We have difficulty with this. Evangelical preaching is in trouble. I was on sabbatical last summer, and I did not go to my church once. That was part of the deal.

And my kids wanted to... I mean, after... Seriously, after about five or six weeks, they really, really missed being at our church. And we had a hard time finding services that, I think, really fed and enriched our worship and our knowledge of God. It was difficult to do that, and I was discouraged by that.

Now there are three common patterns of non-expositional preaching that we find in evangelical churches. There's the evangelistic kind, this is the simple gospel. Basically the church at that point sees itself, as Mark Dever put it in a book, as a stationary tent meeting revival. And its primary job always is soul winning. That lost people will be brought to faith in Christ.

They justify this intense focus by a simple concept and that is the immense worth and value of a single human soul. What would a prophet of man gain the whole world and lose his soul? And so they're very, very concerned about soul winning. Their method is, therefore, the simple proclamation of the Gospel, I'm not ashamed of the Gospel, Romans 1.16, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes. What's interesting about that, though, is that Paul's version of the Gospel is the book of Romans.

All right, the book of Romans is the Gospel for Paul. What you get a lot of these churches are very simple God, man, Christ, response message week after week. And though those things are still true week after week, It is not, I think, what God has ordained through preaching. And I think people tend to get bored. And it's sad, but that should be enough.

But what this preacher has to do is take the simple message of God made in Christ's response that's the same all the time, the changeless gospel, and kind of spice it up with illustrations and anecdotes and all these kind of things to make things more appealing, more interesting. It's the only way he can do it. The goal every week is always the same, decision, leading somebody to make a decision for Christ. You're focusing on that. Once they have made that decision for Christ, they're generally assured, once saved, always saved, and then they stop learning.

Okay, because the next week, what are they going to hear? The same message they heard last week. And this is going to go on permanently, basically. I'm not saying that those people aren't genuinely converted. Many of them are.

But I'm saying, what about the Great Commission? Make disciples of all nations, baptizing them and teaching them to obey everything I've commanded. That sounds pretty comprehensive to me. And that really isn't going on. They say, well, we've got our Wednesday night discipleship classes.

But the fact of the matter is, only a small percentage of the people that walk forward, etc., are going to those Wednesday night classes. The rest of the people are just making it through week by week and then coming to church on Sunday. And they're hearing the same message all the time. And so that's a bit of a problem. And then there's the illustrations.

They end up kind of taking over the sermon. Because you're hearing God, man, Christ's response every single week. It's really the illustrations that are memorable, sometimes shockingly so. As a matter of fact, I found a website recently which acts as somewhat of a better business bureau for sermon illustrations. And I find it very humorous because I've actually noted some of this stuff.

It's www.holwick.com And he's got a little subsection on questionable illustration, so I appreciate this brother for doing it. Found one about kitties from heaven This illustration, there's this cat stuck in a sapling. The pastor can't climb it because the tree won't bear his weight, so he pulls the tree down with a rope, I guess, connected to his car, and the rope breaks and the kitty gets flung, catapult-style, into the air. And a few days later, there's a woman in the church that he knows very well and he knows that she hates cats but she's buying cat food. And he's like, why are you buying cat food?

Well, my daughter's been bugging me for years for a cat. I said, the only way we're getting a cat is if God drops one in our lap from heaven. Well, lo and behold, this cat dropped in and what could we do and it's like oh it's amazing and then the end of the illustration is never doubt the power of God. Well I doubt the power of a story you know what's so sad is these things are put ahead as truth you know it really happened like Pascal's famous god-shaped vacuum look that one up one of my all-time I don't know what shape God has in any case, you know, like a key in a lock. Pascal never said anything about a God-shaped vacuum.

He actually made some very deep statements about how we have an infinite, a need for an infinitude, frankly, within our hearts, and only God can fill that. But there's no God-shaped vacuum. I heard it when I was growing up as a Christian in Campus Crusade for Christ. I heard three talks that mentioned the God-shaped vacuum. It's a valid point, namely that we need God and if we don't have him we'll fill that space up with other things.

That is true. But all I'm saying is that this is bad preaching. This kind of evangelistic approach that the only way you can keep people interested is with kind of scintillating illustrations like this, dramatic illustrations, it's bad preaching. I preached at Southeastern's Chapel, I preached here a number of times, and Danny Aiken asked me the first time. We were good friends in Louisville, but he said, I just have one simple request.

I said, fine, what is it? And he said, please end in prayer. I said, I'm happy. I always end in prayer. And I could tell it had such a meaning for him.

I said, why are you saying it like that? He said, well, we've had a number of preachers that do the walk-off. Basically, you have some dramatic thingy, boom, boom, and the microphone's shaking and the guy walks up, there's no one there, and it's a big dramatic, you know, preaching technique is what it is. I said, I never do that kind of thing. You know, it's drama.

It's like, you know, all these kind of things. But you have to do that if you can't get the glory of God up out of the text. You know, do these techniques, these tricks. And once you've seen it, it doesn't do anything for you the next time. For me, I rather want to be faithful to preach from the scripture what God has said.

There's other approaches. There's the springboard approach, where you basically find a Bible passage as a springboard to launch into who knows where you're going. It's really quite an amazing trip, a journey, light of fancy. And I myself, on my sabbatical summer, I knew when we were done with the Bible. I just knew it.

You know, you could tell. And it could be within two or three minutes sometimes. You know, a couple of things and then you're done. You move on. Some board.

And then there's topical. So this would be five keys to a strong marriage or how to deal with discouragement, improving your prayer life. I think John Piper did a good job of describing what kind of topics are really going to be attractive to the people. Topical. So you've got these kinds of approach, evangelistic, you've got your springboard, and then you've got topics.

Overwhelming majority of evangelical sermons are topical. Now there's of course some drawbacks to the topical approach. Alright, a steady diet of topical sermons does little to help Christians learn the content and contours of the Bible The preacher rather than the book of the Bible determines the preaching agenda often leaving the congregation with an unbalanced diet Bible passages can easily be wrenched out of context Reveals a lack of confidence that all scripture is useful. All right? Basically what you're saying is, I don't think that.

I don't think it's true that the whole Bible is useful. It sets a bad example for our people. I realize that no matter how good my sermons are, it's still going to be just a very small part of the sanctifying process that God has for those individuals. Frankly, the greatest majority of it, of their sanctification from the Scripture, will be their own self-feeding day by day in their own private quiet times and hopefully day by day in their family devotions. I still will only have them about 45 minutes a week.

And so I need to set an example that will work for them the rest of the week. And just the simple exposition of the scripture is a good example for them. We're taking a book of the Bible, we're moving through, we're observing things, we're learning from it. It sets a good example for people. Topical does not.

It can make also for short pastorates. Because Once you've done the kiddie thing and some of the other great illustrations, you're done with that. You've basically spent all that you have to say and you're searching the internet. I saw a cartoon once. I'll never forget this.

This is a pastor down on his knees in a study. Oh, God, give me a sermon to go with this great illustration. I'm thinking, man, if that is an example of the tail wagging the dog, I don't know what is. So here he's found a great story at last, and now he's, oh, they're going to love this one. Let me just try to find some Bible to wrap around it.

That's really very sad. So it leads to short pastures, because they really just run out of things to say they've been exposed Frankly, they don't really have much more that they can give the people but for me I don't think it's got anything to do with me. Anyway, I'm not being exposed. I'm thinking of myself like a pipe or conduit It's the Bible that's just running through me to people and there's enough in here for a 70 year pastorate and more. My whole thing is I will not finish, you know, 14 sermons in Romans 9, are you kidding?

I'm not going to finish the Bible like Jesus said, you know, finish going through the cities of Israel before the Son of Man comes. There's going to be work to be done right to the day you die. And so I'm not out of it. And obviously, we're not having whole new doctrines and a whole new view of God all the time. Not at all.

But there's just what I call a city of truth being erected brick by brick in the hearts of the people. It's patient work, but it's steady and consistent. It's not flashy and dramatic. It makes for a long pastorate at that point. So, what is expositional preaching?

Well, first of all, it is not necessarily verse by verse or all through a book. I'll talk more about that in a minute. But it is not a commentary running word from word and verse to verse without unity outline and pervasive drive It's not rambling comments and an offhand remark about a passage without background or thorough exegesis logical order It's not a massive disconnected suggestions and inferences based on the surface meaning of a passage, but not sustained by a depth and breadth study of the text. It's not pure exegesis no matter how scholarly, if it lacks theme, thesis, outline, and development. There has to be a unity, a message.

All right? Someone once likened the relationship between exegesis and homiletics. The exegesis is the working on the text to understand what it is, and homiletics is the presentation of truth based on that exegesis, is like the relationship between an ancient pearl diver and the jeweler that takes the pearls and puts them into a beautiful necklace. OK? You're not going to use all the pearls you find.

You're going to choose the best pearls, and you're going to line them up and order them in a beautiful arrangement. That's what a sermon is. So it's not just, you know, here's a bunch of pearls, a bunch of things I found from the text. It's not that. It's not a mere structural outline of a passage with a few supporting comments, but without other rhetorical or sermonic elements.

Your desire is to make them amazed at the grace of God. Your desire is by the power of God that their hearts will be burning, that an outline isn't going to do that. I love the section of Spurgeon you gave us there. What a genius he was at words. I learned in preparing for this weekend, he brought one page of notes into the pulpit and did that just standing there.

Now I'm not saying he didn't think some of these thoughts ahead of time, but there's a gift. I remember it listening to John Piper's biography of him and Spurgeon said that frequently he would have seven streams of thought running through his head at the same time while preaching. Well that's not me brothers. So he was at a whole nother level verbally, all right, that he could do this kind of stuff. But still wasn't it powerful when, you know, the Bible speaks to me, it sings to me, it preaches to me?

That's sermonical elements. That is a sermon. But it's based on truth, you see. That's what it is. So it's not just an outline or any of those things.

It's not the ordinary devotional or prayer meeting talk that combines running commentary, rambling remarks, disconnected suggestions. It's not that. Well, what is it? Well, my friend Mark Devereux puts it this way. An expository sermon is that which takes as its main point the main point of the text on which the preacher is preaching.

So the main point of the text is the main point of the sermon. I would push it beyond it, you've already heard me say it, and takes its supporting points also from the text. So basically it's captive to the Word of God all the way through. Your goal always is to explain what the text says so that people go away saying, now I understand what Romans 9, 13, through 15 means. I know it.

I understand it, et cetera. Haddon Robinson said, expository preaching is the communication of a biblical concept derived from and transmitted through a historical, grammatical, and literary study of a passage in context, which the Holy Spirit first applies to the personality and experience of the preacher, and then through the preacher applies to the hearers. So it's a biblical concept. It's coming up through the text, through a historical, grammatical, literary study. We're going to talk about that when I talk about how to prepare an expository message.

But it's going to come up through that, and the Holy Spirit has applied it to the personality of the preacher first, and then through him to the people. That's Haddon Robinson. Brian Chappell, president of Covenant Theological Seminary, He wrote a book, Christ-Centered Preaching. He also has done some great work on preaching Christ from the Old Testament. Very, very important concepts.

This is what he said, Proponents of expository preaching would say this, an expository is solemnly bound to say what God says. In an expository message, we relate precisely what a text of Scripture says. A more technical explanation, an old one that I hold to, is that an expository message gets its main points and sub-points directly from the text. So I agree with what Brian Chappell says. A textual message gets its main points from the text, but its developmental components elsewhere.

A topical message gets only its topic from the text and could be developed according to the nature of the topics rather than the text. An expository message, however, says what the text says and gets all of its developmental features from the text as well. Stephen Alford put it this way, expository preaching is the spirit-empowered explanation and proclamation of the text of God's word with due regard to the historical, contextual, grammatical and doctrinal significance of the given passage with the specific object of invoking a Christ-transforming response. John Piper puts it this way, it is my contention that all true Christian preaching is expository preaching. Of course, if by an expository sermon is meant a verse-by-verse explanation of a lengthy passage of scripture, then indeed it is only one possible way of preaching.

But this would be a misuse of the word. Properly speaking, exposition has a much broader meaning. It refers to the content of the sermon, namely biblical truth, rather than its style, a running commentary. To expound scripture is to bring out of the text what is there and expose it to view. Psalm 119 says, the unfolding of your words brings light.

So basically, I feel like people talk to me about, and somebody once came and said, you did a great job unpacking that text. Well, I love that. Unpacking it. One of the great insights I got from Martin Lloyd-Jones who preached for 13 years on Romans, okay, 13 years. He could preach sometimes seven sermons on a half a verse, all right?

Which is kind of amazing. And I think it's when you're at that level then it starts to become topical. You know, when you're at, when you are like on half a word or something like that, after a while it inverts, you know. And that, but that's, I mean, how, who are we to question the good doctor? But at any rate, 13 years.

But that was on Friday night, it wasn't on Sunday mornings, and it was like if you came there, if you could get a seat, friends. But if you came there, you know what you're there for and you didn't complain. You didn't worry about how far he was going to get. Just that faithful preaching year after year after year, but what he said, his insight was very, very strong, and that is Paul couldn't go to Rome yet. In Romans 1 he explains that he'd like to come and impart a spiritual gift to them, but he can't get there.

In Romans 15, he explains why. Because first of all, he's a trailblazing, frontier, church-planning apostle. He doesn't go to established churches and build on another man's foundation. That's not what he does. He goes to Spain.

And he's going to go to Spain, and he'd like to visit them on the way through. So he's reducing the expectations that he's going to be the in-house preacher. He's not. He's going to stay with them for a little while, to have a little hospitality. And he'd like them to help him on his journey there, so give him some money.

But while he's there, he'd like to impart something to them. Until he comes, though, he sends the letter in his place. And you know what the letter is? It's a summary of what he would spend time teaching if he were there. Romans is a summary, a brief summary of what he would teach.

You know, like, wow, 432 verses, a brief summary. Well, that's why you can take a chapter and it just unfolds into this incredible, it's like my kids have these little things, they're these different colors, and you put them in water and come back the next morning, and they're huge. They become like a dinosaur or an elephant. You know what I'm talking about? These little foam things.

And they're a little scary, because they keep growing. After a while, you're like, where does it stop? It's a bit weird. But that's what Romans, you just drop it in and it just grows and grows and grows and grows. That's because it was a summary of what he wanted to teach them.

And so exposition is an unpacking of what is there, of everything that God put into those verses. It's awesome. And then Piper says, when I call preaching expository exaltation, that's what I mean by expository. To expound scriptures, to bring out of the text what is there and expose it to view. Albert Mohler puts it this way, expository preaching is that mode of Christian preaching that tastes as its central purpose the presentation and application of the text of the Bible.

All other issues and concerns are subordinated to that central task of presenting the biblical text. Now Mark Dever, he actually says, all of his sermons are expository, so he says, and I think it's true. He is able to preach an expository sermon on the Bible. Alright? And then the next week he'll preach an expository sermon on the New Testament and on the Old Testament.

He can preach an expository sermon on the book of Isaiah. He can preach an expository sermon on the first half of Isaiah. He can do that. I'm not so good at that. He is great at big picture.

If you've gotten his Old Testament overviews and New Testament overviews, you're going to get 13 or 14 pages, let's say, on the book of Ezekiel. He'll do a great job of giving you a sense of the message of the whole book. He's just really excellent at that. But he calls that exposition because he says the main point of the Bible is such and such, and he's going to preach an expository sermon on the Bible. The main point of Isaiah is such and such.

My problem is I love the details. I don't know what the main point of Isaiah is my goodness There are so many themes in Isaiah obviously we don't always say the glory of God, but I mean to say it's just this I Remember one of the preachers that I heard before did this thing It's My son told me this is the lyrics of the song. It's called He Is. In Genesis, he's the breath of life. In Exodus, the Passover lamb.

In Leviticus, he's our high priest. In Numbers, he's the fire by night. I'm thinking, how do you do that? I'm interested in Isaiah. I'm always interested in Isaiah.

Isaiah is like a world to be explored. In Isaiah, he's the Prince of Peace. Is that all? What about wonderful counselor? Is he that, too, in Isaiah?

How about mighty God? I mean, I don't know how you do that, how you sum it all up in one thing, but the idea is, what is the text saying? What is its main idea? And you're bringing that across, and what are its sub-points? That is expositional preaching.

Now there are different types of expository strategies for the pulpit, Okay? There are three types. There is random exposition, there is thematic exposition, and consecutive exposition. Okay? First, random exposition is a preacher selecting a different passage every week with each passage having little or no relationship to the previous one.

In this way, each passage would be handled in an expository fashion. But there would be no deliberate flow or cohesiveness from one week to the next. For example, he might preach Ephesians 5, 22 through 24 one week, and Psalm 119, 9 through 16 the next week, and Mark 10, 13 through 16 the next week. So that's one approach, a random exposition. Secondly, he could select a group of passages, each of which deal with the same topic or theme and then preach them week after week until the series is completed.

Like you might do something on the Christian family. And so we would do something from Ephesians on marriage and something from Proverbs on parenting. And there's a series on the Christian family. Every sermon is expository on that text. You see.

But, you know, week by week it's going to be a different passage. The third is consecutive exposition, which is basically you take a book of the Bible and preach through it. And you just continue going, like Lloyd-Jones, 13 years, and Romans. Even there, though, there could be different flavors of that. Like what I do is a long book, I'm not going to be forever in Isaiah.

I'm about to start Isaiah after Easter. So 66 chapters, I don't know that I could preach just 66 sermons on Isaiah. I just think that some of those chapters, like Isaiah 40, I mean just unbelievable. You know how many sermons could flow from Isaiah 40 alone? Just incredible, the truths, the greatness of God.

But even there, I don't think I'd want to make my church listen to just one genre of scripture, one book of scripture For two or three years. I think there's certainly value in it But I think you know Jesus began with Moses and all the prophets and moved through I think there's some value to that too as well to give a sense of the scope of scripture So what you could do is you could do you know and I frustrated Scott with this didn't I Scott? I mean it was a Genesis that I bothered you because I abandoned you I was just slightly ahead of Scott, and he was listening to some of his sermons, and we were talking, and then I just left Genesis and went to Matthew, I think. And so he then passed me by. Sorry about that.

But at any rate, But you know who was just ahead of me was Piper. And so when I did that, then I could listen to him on Romans. And then he could get on. And then I could get behind him and learn from him. So all that kind of thing.

But there are different strategies. Some just faithfully would take a book and go all the way through it. James Montgomery Boyce did that for a long, long time. And Bush just kept on going. J.

Vernon McGee. Just right on through. And there's value to that. There's different strategies in exposition. Random exposition, who would be a great example of that?

Different sermon every week, different text every week. No idea? Charles Burgin. All right? We'll talk about him tomorrow, but I mean, he just, he really did not believe in doing sermon series from books.

He actually, well, I'm still tomorrow's thunder. We'll talk about that. All right, what scriptural support can we take for our expositional preaching? Well, first of all, All scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching or rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness. 2 Timothy 3.16.

Matthew chapter 4. Man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. Okay, so exposition basically picks up and deals seriously with clauses or phrases or sections of scripture that you might be tempted to discard as unimportant. It forces you to think about them. And you know what that does?

It forces you to keep learning. I learned so much by preaching expositional sermons. You know, it forces you to look at things and say, what is going on here? And to really learn from the text. It's fascinating.

Secondly, the nature of inspiration. Second to Peter 1, 20, and 21. Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of scripture ever came about by the prophet's own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit so the scripture is inspired they're carried along by the Holy Spirit and Therefore as we're going to talk about tomorrow with Calvin. There's the sense of God himself Speaking to us through this through the scripture thirdly faith comes by hearing This is very important in my doctrine of salvation.

All right faith doesn't just begin by hearing the Word of God Faith is sustained and grows by an ongoing hearing of the Word of God. So many evangelicals even look on faith and salvation like some kind of set piece thing that you have and you put on a shelf and you're going to need it on judgment day, you know, and now you have it. That is not how it's presented. Salvation, faith, those aspects are presented as living things like a vine and a branch that need ongoing Nurture in order to continue to survive Could your faith in Christ die if it were not nourished and sustained by Almighty God? Could it die?

Is it independent from God's sustaining grace your faith? I tell you it is not. I tell you he who began the faith must sustain it and continue it or it will die. Simon, Simon, Satan has demanded to sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. Suppose he doesn't pray, and suppose God doesn't answer the prayer.

Will Simon's faith fail? I say it will. I say Satan is strong enough to make our faith fail. You think not? Do you think you could say, God, I'm on my own now.

I got it now. I understand about faith. You don't need to do a thing for me. I've got it from here to the end of my life. Satan, have at me.

Whatever you do, I can handle it because I am a strong believer. Do you really think that? Or do you think that you need a constant nourishing of your faith by the Word of God. Remember Pilgrim's Progress, remember Interpreter's House, all these little images of the Christian life. And one of them is the fire in the bowl and there's a wall and behind it, fed in at the bottom, is a pipe of oil keeping the fire going.

And on the other side, where the fire is burning, is one who's trying to douse it with water. What means this, says Christian? An interpreter says, this is the fire is the work of grace in the soul, work of salvation. The one trying to douse it is the devil. The one behind the wall feeding it with oil is Christ, who continually nurtures our faith in the work of grace and the soul.

But he's behind the wall in that his nurturing of it cannot be seen by us. And no matter how much the devil tries to put out that flame he cannot because Christ keeps it nurtured I'm asking how does he do it? Faith comes by hearing yes faith is also nurtured and sustained by hearing the Word of God So we must Give them the scripture we must continue to preach or else their faith will wane it will grow weak It will flag and fail all right and again I know that our sermon my sermon is not the only thing going on they can hear good Christian preaching on Mp3s and and streaming and all kinds of stuff good. That's great I want them to but I'm just saying they must hear the word in order for their faith isn't to be sustained It's just the way it is also the sufficiency of Scripture We have been given it says in second Peter 1 3 & 4 his divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness Through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness, through these he has given us his very great and precious promises.

So that by them we may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. Word of God is at the center of that. The sufficiency of scripture enables us to escape the corruption in the world and to be conformed to God. So we must have the word of God for that. There are promises resulting in growth and in Acts 20 the Apostle Paul said, I did not Shrink back from preaching or proclaiming to the whole council of God Everything that God had said this is what has been entrusted to us.

I also like this concept God wastes Nothing. Okay, you think about after the feeding of 5, 000 Jesus said to his disciples gather up the broken pieces that are left over let nothing be wasted Let nothing be wasted could God really care more about broken pieces of bread and fish on the ground than he does about his own word Why is it then that so many people look on some of God's words as wasted words that are really of no use to be studied, like the genealogies, like certain sections of the Law of Moses. I was reading to my kids, I'm reading through the Bible in a year, a friend of mine gave me a Bible which is broken up into Old Testament, New Testament reading, Psalms, Proverbs, get through the whole Bible that way in a year, and you open up to the date. So you open up to March 7th or whatever, and you read March 7th's date, and there it is. And it gets you through the year.

I was very perplexed, a legalist that I am, on February 29th this year, because there was no reading. I didn't know what to do. I'm lost. I went to my wife. What should I do?

I didn't know when to get ahead or behind. What do I do? She's like, read the Bible. Do whatever you want. You're free.

Scott said, free. You're free. You don't have to. Whatever. So Just ongoing.

But I was reading to my kids, and I'm going through Leviticus, and that section where it's talking about leprosy and skin diseases, and they were eating breakfast, like, Dad, stop. You know? The white hair in the center of the sore, and it's running, and check it again in a week, and they're eating their cereal. And even worse, their mom had called them away for a while and they came back and cereal isn't quite the same after about ten minutes you know so they're eating warm milk mush cereal while I'm describing You know the leper and how to deal with them and they're like dad, you know, but I said it's God's Word You need to love God's Word all of it there for a reason and one of my kids They asked why did God give us that I said I cannot answer that but I know he has and for some reason he wants us to look at these passages in Leviticus and understand something about perhaps the corruption of sin or the purification that Christ gives us, the cleansing, I don't know. But there's nothing wasted.

Everything's there. Also, spiritual thoughts and spiritual words, 1 Corinthians 2, 12 and 13. We have not received the spirit of the world But the spirit who is from God that we may understand what God has freely given us this we speak not in words taught by Human wisdom but in words taught by the spirit expressing spiritual truth and spiritual words. I don't know what those are Therefore I have to preach the Word because I don't know how to express these spiritual truths and spiritual words. The Spirit gives me the vocabulary, gives me the language by sticking close to the text.

Also, we need to avoid human eloquence. Again, 1 Corinthians 2, 1-5, When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or Superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God for I resolved to know nothing miles with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified I came to in weakness and fear and with much trembling my message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power so that your faith might not rest on man's wisdom, but on God's power." It is so important that a preacher, I would think, Spurgeon had to constantly fight his own eloquence and brilliance and get out of the way of it and be sure it was God in his spirit and his word coming through all that talent. But that no one would walk away saying, what a great preacher, but rather that they would walk away saying, what a great savior. What a great Savior. That's the key, but we've got to avoid human eloquence and pyrotechnics of, you know, technique, all that kind of thing.

Just the simple proclamation of the Word. This is the key to eternal fruitfulness. John 15, 7 and 8. If you remain in me, said Jesus, and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be given to you this is to my father's glory that you bear much fruit and so prove yourself to be my disciples okay that's powerful I want my people and I want myself I want to bear an eternal harvest for Judgment Day I want to have something to show for my time here on earth I don't want to waste a single day well Jesus in John 15 7 & 8 tells me how if you remain in me and my words plural remain in you then ask whatever you wish that's prayer And it will be given to you. This is to my Father's glory, that's the central purpose of the universe, that you bear much fruit and prove yourself to have been my disciple.

That's the point. The point is I want my people to bear fruit for the glory of God. How so? They need to abide in Christ and his words need to remain in them. Expository preaching helps with that.

It helps God's words remain or abide in him. Well I have more to say about this, but let me close with this. As we look at exposition and as we look at the practice of expository preaching, as we try to understand what we're doing, I have a sense of the greatness of the calling of this. Martin Lloyd-Jones said, and I would somewhat refute this at one level and understand it another, said the greatest and highest calling to which anyone could ever be called is the preacher of the word of God. Now, why would I reject that?

Because not everyone is called to preach. As a matter of fact, it says in James, let not many of you presume to be teachers. Okay? I would adjust the good doctor statement saying there can be no greater or higher calling than that to which you were called. Can you do better than what you were called to do by God.

You can't. And so therefore, whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus. Whether you're washing dishes, mowing the lawn, or preaching a sermon, everything can be done to the glory of God. All right, that's true. But in another sense, I understand why I said it.

Because the Word of God primes the pump for everything in the Christian life everything It primes the pump for every aspect of salvation justification sanctification Glorification all of it flows from the Word of God God has ordained it so and so therefore I understand why he said there can be no greater or higher calling than Speaking the words of life constantly to the people of God so that good fruit can come from their hearts and from their lives So what I would urge you to do if you are a preacher of the word if you're called on to to preach then give yourself fully to that calling. Be diligent in it, as Paul said to Timothy. Study to learn how to rightly divide the word of truth so you can show yourself approved, somebody who doesn't need to be ashamed. Work at it. If you are not called on to the vocational ministry, you're not going to be actually preaching a sermon.

Rather, you can preach sermons to your own families, as fathers, as husbands. You can preach expositional sermons to them day after day, of far more lasting impact, I think, than the pastor of your church. And also, if you're ever on a search committee, you'll know what to look for, okay? You want somebody that's going to be faithfully teaching and preaching the Word of God. And you can pray for your present pastor that he would be faithful and even more faithful in this very matter.

Close with me if you wouldn't pray. Father, we Thank you for the time we've had to study today, Expositional Preaching. We've come to understand it as an unfolding of your words that gives light to the simple. Psalm 119, I pray that you would help me to be more faithful with this. I pray for Scott and my other brothers here that are pastors that have the duty to unfold the Word of God, that we would be faithful to be captive to the text and to the Word.

Now Father, I thank you for this time that we have on Friday and Saturday to study the Word. It's a great privilege, really, a great privilege, without fear of persecution or attack, free from needing to provide for our families today and tomorrow. We have the freedom, the leisure to study the Word. Thank you for this privilege. I pray that we make the most of it, Lord, and I pray that your Word would run and do excellently in our own hearts and lives in our churches and our nation.

In Jesus' name, Amen. Messages, articles, and videos on the subject of conforming the Church and the family to the Word of God and for more information about the National Center for Family Integrated Churches where you can search our online network to find family integrated churches in your area, log on to our website ncfic.org.