HOW IS YOUR PASTOR PREACHING?
Today in many churches a typical Sunday morning will look something like this, after announcements the choir will sing a couple of worship songs. And after that, if your church is a little more modernized there might be some sort of biblical skit/dramatization to entertain the crowd. & then the pastor afterward steps up to the podium to teach the word of God. The pastor proceeds to urge the audience to stand for the reading of God’s word, reads the scripture of choice, informs the crowd of his topic of choice, then prays that God will hide him behind the cross so that God will get all the glory. From that point, the pastor says you may be seated, puts down the bible & begins to speak about the topic of his choice & will occasionally revert to the scriptures to validate his point. Usually, this is what many of us see when it comes to the delivery of God’s word. The pastor is usually expounding on his topic & uses the bible as a footnote to elaborate on the chosen topic. The major problem I see with this approach to preaching is that people are not being taught the word of God they are merely listening to a clever topic.
Several years ago I was introduced to a style of preaching that revolutionized my life and understanding of God. The style of teaching was called expository teaching. If by chance you’ve never heard of expository preaching, it involves the exposition, or comprehensive explanation, of the Scripture; that is, expository preaching presents the meaning and intent of a biblical text, providing commentary and examples to make the passage clear and understandable. The word exposition is related to the word expose — the expository preacher’s goal is simply to expose the meaning of the Bible, verse by verse. To put it another way in short the pastor who preaches a topical message uses the bible to support his topic. The pastor who teaches expository the bible is the topic. So let’s examine this a little further, how does the bible command a pastor to preach/teach? Let’s look at 2 Timothy 4:1-2 in the bible it states “I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom: Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching.”
In this passage of scripture Apostle Paul is simply giving a command to the young preacher Timothy to preach the word of God. To give more clarity Paul is telling him that his job as a pastor is to always explain/exposit the scriptures to God’s people. But sadly that’s not the approach we see ministers taking toward presenting the word of God. See if a pastor’s only means by which to deliver God’s word is topical, he can jump all around the bible. What I mean is he can pick & choose what message will be delivered to the congregation; in fact, he never has to preach on hard subjects like the doctrine of hell, or homosexuality, etc if he doesn’t want to. But not so with the expository teacher, he has to deal with those hard topics because he’s teaching the bible verse by verse & sooner or later that minister is going to run into those passages of scripture that strictly deals with those sins. For example, if a topical preacher needs to raise money to expand the church into a new building he can simply start a new teaching series at the church on why it’s a blessing to give. Now I am not against giving money to a church to go towards a new building. But what I am saying is it’s very easy for the pastor to use the word of God to try & further his agenda instead of staying true to teaching the scriptures in the proper context.
After Jesus left this earth & ascended back to Heaven the first recorded sermon was given by the Apostle Peter in the book of Acts 2:14-36 (see for reference) this was the day of Pentecost where Jews & people from all nations gathered together to celebrate the giving of the law to Moses on Sinai. God sent the Holy Spirit upon them & many began to speak in tongues/other human languages. Now this event was foretold to happen by the prophet Joel from the Old Testament. Well, some people in the crowd thought the people speaking in tongues were drunk. So Peter stood up & explained to the crowd from the scriptures the meaning of what they were witnessing on that day. Hence Peter’s first sermon was expository because he explained the meaning of the event using scripture. Lastly, we would all agree as Christians Jesus was the greatest preacher to walk the face of this earth. After Jesus rose from the dead he met two disciples on a road called Emmaus. Let’s take a look @ how Jesus preaches the word, for the sake of time I’m only going to focus on Luke 24:27 instead of the whole passage which starts with 13-27. 24:27 states “And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He (Jesus) expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.” Basically, Jesus did an expository sermon explaining himself by using scriptures.