January 31, 2007
Should our preaching be 'expository'?
The traditional categories or 'types' of preaching have been given as 'topical', 'textual', and 'expository. A topical sermon uses several passages to support a thesis about a particular topic or subject. A textual sermon uses a single passage but mainly to illustrate (or as a jumping off point to support) a thesis. (Sometimes, the term 'textual preaching' is used to refer to the practice of choosing different texts each week instead of preaching consecutively through a book of the Bible.) But an expository sermon focuses on explaining a single passage, taking its entire outline and shape from the passage, and allows the sermon thesis to arise out of that process of text explanation. The point of the sermon must be the point of the writer of the Biblical text.
The division between these approaches is, roughly speaking, this--we can either use text(s) to explain/expose our "point", or we can make our point by explaining and exposing the text.
Most people in the conservative/evangelical world insist (loudly) that the expository method is the only true and proper way to preach. Other methods are disdained as morally and theologically inferior. But why? 1) First, other forms of preaching are considered 'man-pleasing' because we are choosing texts we prefer rather than preaching through the 'whole counsel of God' as God provides it in the Bible. 2) Second, other forms of preaching are more open to abuse since your thesis is not being controlled directly by the text. 3) Thirdly, other forms of preaching do not show as much honor to the text of Scripture. The expositor focuses on the Biblical passage itself in a way that the others do not.
Despite the 'common sense' appeal of these arguments, there is almost no example in the Bible of any speaker or teacher doing what we would call an expository sermon. Paul's sermons and letters are 'synthetic', drawing from a great variety of Biblical texts. So is the preaching of Peter and others in the book of Acts. So the reasons on which we adopt a preaching 'type' or approach will ultimately be practical ones. Some of the practical reasons are personal with regard to the preacher. (Expository method helps the preacher grow, avoids 'same-ness' of theme and message, and so on.) But Haddon Robinson points out in a recent interview that a main reason to use the expository method now is missiological.
If you ask why is expository preaching more important today, it is that we don't have the authority that preachers had in the past. The truth is that -- aside from people that have grown up in the church -- the average person in our society does not give high grades to preachers as being intellectual or even moral leaders .... Today a lawyer that's defending a minister will do every thing that he can to keep the people in the jury from thinking of him as a minister ... Therefore in a postmodem age one reason that we work with the biblical text is to have the authority of the text -- and behind that the authority of God -- behind what we say .... That is not to say that the person in the pew has to accept my view of inspiration...[but] I can [still] lay that out before them in a relevant fashion it has the power to do what my authority today can't do.
Robinson is saying that since people don't trust the preacher anymore, you've got to show them that your thesis is not your idea alone! Rather, it is the teaching of this ancient and respected text. (Of course, secular people don't trust the Bible either, but--believe it or not--they still will trust an ancient and venerated text more than they do the preacher, as long as they don't find something overtly 'offensive' in it.)
Now the reasoning or the motivation for your expository preaching will have a great impact on the way in which you expound. If you do expository preaching because you think that it is the only 'right' way then you will tend to wield the Bible as if it is strong medicine that the children need but don't want but you are going to make them take anyway. But if you do expository preaching because you believe it is the best way today to reach resistant people with the truth, then you will probably carry out your preaching course in a different way.
Preaching the Gospel in a Post-Modern World, Timothy J. Keller pp. 4-5.