Expository Preaching Regards God's Word as Sufficient

Every pastor worth his salt has felt, at some point in his ministry, the tremendous need for his congregation to hear and know the truths of God that will transform their thinking and rescue them from the captivity and blindness of spiritual ignorance. We want them to experience the absolute freedom Christ said comes to those who “know the truth.” But the sincere pastor also knows that the desire to feed God’s flock with His Truth is often followed by some measure of stress or intimidation at the question of what we should teach next. We tend to see ourselves as responsible for discovering which truths are needed and then developing catchy, memorable ways to convey them to God’s people.

But is this method of searching for impactful truths that meet the needs of our congregation the best approach? After all, no pastor can know every need or concern in his congregation! What if our “diagnose and dispense” mindset leads to the stunted growth of our church members because of our lack of perception? What if our method of bouncing from one text to another conveys an improper concept of biblical study? Do we leave a sense that the Bible is basically a reference book to consult about problem issues or that it can only be understood with the help of a pastor to boil it down to several alliterated points and a succinct summary? Most concerning of all, what if the truths our congregation needs to hear are ones that we ourselves are struggling to grasp? How shall we instruct them out of our own ignorance?

In this brewing storm of doubt concerning our approach to preaching, the message of 2 Timothy 3:16-17 speaks like an anchor for the pastor’s heart. As young Timothy labored in Ephesus to avoid false teachings and useless arguments, Paul urged him — and all preachers after him — to trust in the power of the Word to nurture God’s flock. The growth of God’s children will depend on their understanding of the “pure milk of the word” (1 Pet. 2:2), not the nuggets of wisdom dispensed by seasoned pastors. And, while the Scriptures are “God-breathed,” our clever outlines and compelling stories are not. So, preachers are called to rest upon the Word of God, faithfully and earnestly expounded, as fully sufficient for the task of feeding God’s sheep. However, this confidence in the Scriptures should not be a “resting” that leads one to ease into sermon-making or to spend less effort in preparing the proclamation of the Word. Rather, it is a confidence that manifests itself in tireless labor to ensure that the content and intent of the sermon are designed to faithfully communicate the content and intent of a biblical text [1]. All effort is made to understand the thrust of the text. All sermon outlines, illustrations, and applications are constrained to the useful explanation of the text and its message. The preacher may humbly but confidently preach such a sermon, knowing that the message of God’s Word, not the packaging of the pastor’s sermon, will bring about the lasting change needed in people's hearts.

But Paul instructs Timothy in more than the sufficiency of the power of the Scriptures. He also reminds him of the sufficient relevance of the Scriptures. He points out that all Scripture — not just select portions— is “profitable” for instructing God’s people! Now, we recognize that some passages are more challenging to comprehend, and some sections require more explanation than others. This might cause us to hesitate to preach from specific texts because of the daunting work required to teach them well. But this is not because of any lack of relevance or transformative power in the text. If we doggedly pursue a proper understanding of such difficult passages, we may help God’s people learn things that we would have never thought to teach them otherwise. This will also help overcome the problem of lacking perceptiveness mentioned earlier. Because we cannot possibly be aware of all the problems and concerns that our people face, we cannot trust ourselves to address them adequately. But we can trust in the power of the divinely shaped text to speak the needed truth of God with all the transformative power necessary to grow His people! It was such a commitment to teach “the whole counsel of God” that gave Paul peace that he had done all he could for the believers in Ephesus (Acts 20:26-27). He did not need to be concerned that he had skipped over something, either because of his preferences or his ignorance of their needs. 

Trusting in the sufficiency of the Scriptures to feed and grow the people of God is not easy. Whenever a specific need or problem arises in the church, there will be a chance to develop the sermon based on the perceived need. And there may be times when such a change is advisable. Yet, tailoring a sermon to focus on a particular need of the people is less needful than we may think. When a pastor has been led, after much prayer and contemplation, to begin a study in a specific book of the Bible, he can have confidence that the Divine Author knows what the sheep need even better than the pastor who cares for them. Testimonies abound of preachers who, unaware of certain circumstances within the congregation, preached expository sermons from texts that would have seemed ill-suited for those specific circumstances. Some pastors even admit that they might have changed the topic or “added a word” for the hurting sheep if they had known the details before preaching the sermon. Yet, time and time again, God’s people have assured those same preachers that the message of the text was just what they needed. In some instances, the message of that “ill-suited” text became the vital truth that sustained them in the darkest of times! Such testimonies illustrate that God nourishes his people through His Word in ways we cannot predict. He alone can see their deepest needs, and He alone is capable of orchestrating events to provide the faith-building truth they need at precisely the time they need it. For this reason, we believe that careful, passionate, expository preaching is the best way to leverage the sufficiency of the Scriptures for shepherding God’s people in the Truth.

[1] This has been our working definition of expository preaching.