Have you ever heard a bad sermon?
How quickly could you answer “yes”? You may even be thinking of the bad sermon you heard this past Sunday.
Maybe a better question for our purposes in this article is how do you judge a good sermon or a bad sermon? What makes for a good sermon?
Does it need to have a certain amount or kind of illustrations? Or maybe it just depends on the topic? Or for most of us, as long as it is not too long, then it’s a good sermon.
But a good sermon is not weighed by any of those things. A good sermon is a sermon that declares God’s Word with clarity, simplicity and power.
A good sermon is one where the preacher brings out of Scripture what is already there. If the Bible is his God-breathed Word of God (2 Timothy 3:16-17), then what we need out of our sermons is the God-breathed Word of God.
Let me ask the question again, what makes a good sermon? An expositional sermon. Therefore, expositional preaching is vital for the health of God’s church. This is because God’s Word creates God’s church. God’s Word sustains God’s church. God’s Word grows God’s church.
Expositional preaching is important for the health and vitality of the church because God’s Word saves, sustains and sanctifies the church. This will serve as the driving argument for the remainder of this article. It is something that we, at RSRP, believe strongly as individuals and as churches.
In order to make this argument, though, we should define some terms, like what expositional preaching is.
WHAT IS EXPOSITIONAL PREACHING?
Quite simply, expositional preaching is declaring God’s Word to God’s church. It is where the main point of the Scripture passage is the main point of the sermon. Think about it like driving a car. If the car is the sermon, who is driving the sermon? Is it the preacher or is it God’s Word? In expositional preaching, the driver is not the preacher, but God’s Word.
David Helm, who literally wrote the book on Expositional Preaching, says it this way: “Expositional preaching is empowered preaching that rightfully submits the shape and emphasis of the sermon to the shape and emphasis of a biblical text.”
Let me make three brief observations from this definition:
First, expositional preaching is empowered preaching. I love that first part, because expositional preaching has a bad rap. When many hear of expository preaching, they think boring, academic, and long, VERY long sermons. But when we say expository preaching is important, we mean Spirit-empowered preaching is important.
Second, expositional preaching rightfully submits. This is a key word, because there are some who call themselves expository preachers but what they mean is that they are Bible preachers. You can preach the Bible but not preach expositionally. In fact, one of my favorite preachers of all time, Charles Spurgeon, preached this way. But an expository preacher rightfully submits a sermon to the text. They don’t preach what they want from the Bible; they preach what the Bible says.
This is then our third observation: in expositional preaching, the shape and emphasis of the sermon is submitted to the shape and emphasis of a biblical text. That is, how and what the preacher says is rightfully submitted to the biblical text. As preachers, our responsibility is to bring out what the Spirit has said. It is not our responsibility to get the Bible to say what we want it to say, but to say what it says.
This is expositional preaching. The empowered preaching of God’s Word where the shape and emphasis of a sermon is rightfully submitted to the shape and emphasis of the biblical text for that day.
THE IMPORTANCE OF EXPOSITIONAL PREACHING
Why then is this kind of preaching important?
First, this is the kind of preaching that God’s Word commends. If you’ve been in and a part of a church for a while, you’ll probably be familiar with 2 Timothy 3:16-17:
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
The power and authority of the Bible comes because it is the very Word of God. But, how familiar are you with the next two verses? Where the apostle says this in 2 Timothy 4:1–2:
I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching.
Do you see it? Preach the word. Notice what Paul does not say. He doesn’t say: “preach your will” or “preach your ideas” or “preach certain topics.” He says, preach the word.
There are a variety of different ways to preach. I think of three major ones: expositional preaching, biblical preaching, and topical preaching. In each of these, you can preach the Bible, and each has value in different seasons.
But, only expositional preaching puts us in a position to consistently and faithfully preach the word. This is because in those other means of preaching, someone else is often in the driver’s seat of the sermon other than God’s Word.
To preach the word is to put the whole of God’s Word before the people of God. Expositional preaching where the content and emphasis of the sermon is submitted to the content and emphasis of the Scripture best enables us to preach the word.
God’s Word commends expositional preaching, not just in the command of 2 Timothy 4, but also in the examples of the New Testament. In Hebrews 3 we find an expositional sermon in 3:7-4:13. The author goes to Psalm 95 and then explains it and applies it to the people.
If this is the method God has chosen to reveal himself in part to us, why would we choose a different method to make God known to his people today?
Second, this is the kind of preaching that God’s people need. God’s people need God’s Word, this is why expositional preaching is important.
We need God’s Word because God’s Word saves, sustains and sanctifies the church.
God’s Word saves. Look at what 2 Timothy 3:14-15 says:
But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.
Do you see it? What are the sacred writings, ie the Scriptures, able to do? Make you wise for salvation. Or as Romans 10:17 says: “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.”
God’s Word saves. This is seen in the logos (the Word of God) taking on flesh and coming to earth to dwell with his people—not just to make God known, but to pay the price our sin owed in his death on the cross and to rise again triumphant over death. God’s Word saves as it reveals to us the Word of God in flesh: Jesus Christ.
Therefore, we the people of God need God’s Word. Not only because it saves, but also because it sustains us.
God’s Word sustains. The Word of God is like food for our soul. Moses in the book of Deuteronomy points the Israelites to God’s sustaining of them with manna in the wilderness as a picture of his sustaining his people with his Word. This is what we read in Deuteronomy 8:3:
And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.
Man lives by every word, not some of the words, but every word. God’s Word sustains us. Like a good meal sustains us until the next meal, we need God’s Word to sustain us.
If God’s Word sustains us, what are we feeding our people? Are we feeding the Word of God? Or are we feeding them our thoughts about God? They need God’s Word.
Finally, God’s Word sanctifies. Jesus in John 17:17 prays this for his disciples: “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth” (emphasis mine).
What sanctifies God’s people? The truth. Where do we find the truth? In God’s Word.
We all long to be growing in holiness, but the way people grow in holiness is not through watching movie clips, listening to funny stories or jokes, but through the proclamation of the truth of God’s Word.
What makes for a good sermon? An expositional sermon, where God’s people are fed God’s Word that saves, sustains and sanctifies them.