Expositional Preaching

The Biblical Way of Studying and Preaching

“They read from the book, from the Law of God, clearly, and they gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.”  — Nehemiah 8:8 (ESV)

WHAT IS IT AND WHY IS IT NEEDED?

I have noticed a trend in the church. Preachers are working harder on their innovative abilities to communicate than on the power of the text itself. An inventor can become so consumed with the aesthetics of his device that he neglects its functionality. At that point the invention is useless, or at best limited. Could the same be said of preaching that prioritizes style over Scripture? We think so, and we think the remedy is as old as the Bible itself.

Expositional preaching is the systematic study and delivery of God’s Word, chapter by chapter and verse by verse. It lets the text define the text and Scripture explain Scripture. To value expositional preaching is simply to value God’s Word. If we truly believe the Holy Scriptures are what they claim to be, the very words breathed out from heaven, then we must teach them in a way that honors that reality. The church must return to proper exposition because our foundations have grown shallow and our understanding has drifted. The opinions of men have shaped the modern church far more than the Word of God, and the consequences are visible everywhere — we have a decaying society and a church that is crumbling.

THE BIBLICAL CASE

We do not want to simply offer our opinions. We value the inspired Word of the Holy Spirit, so let us show you what He says. Nehemiah 8:8 is our foundation:

“They read from the book, from the Law of God, clearly, and they gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.”  — Nehemiah 8:8 (ESV)

Text, explanation, understanding. That is the entire method in one verse. It was not innovative. It was not spectacular. It was faithful, and it was enough.

Paul charges Timothy plainly in 2 Timothy 4:2:

“Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching.”  — 2 Timothy 4:2 (ESV)

He does not say preach ideas, preach felt needs, or preach relevance. Preach the word. This charge was not for Timothy alone. It was entrusted to him to carry forward and to train men for ministry in every generation. The ground of it all is 2 Timothy 3:16–17. If all Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable, then the preacher’s highest calling is to get out of the way and let it be profitable. Unfortunately that happens far too little today.

CHRIST’S EXAMPLE

If we need a model, we need look no further than Jesus himself. In Luke 4 he opened the scroll of Isaiah, read it, and declared its fulfillment. He did not use the text as a launching pad for clever ideas. The text was the sermon. Even more striking is Luke 24:27. Walking with two discouraged disciples on the road to Emmaus,

“…beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.”  — Luke 24:27 (ESV)

Jesus opened the Bible and preached through it. If that is how the Son of God chose to communicate, it should settle the question of method for the rest of us.

THE REFORMATION RECOVERY

For centuries medieval preaching had drifted into allegory, moralizing, and speculation largely untethered from the plain meaning of the text. The church had become more interested in its own tradition than in what God actually said. The Reformers broke from that. They returned to the grammatical historical method because they believed the Holy Spirit spoke through the plain sense of Scripture and that ordinary people deserved to hear God speak rather than watch a performance.

The Reformers preached consecutively through books of the Bible for decades. That was not a stylistic quirk. It was a theology of preaching rooted in a conviction that every part of Scripture was worth the congregation’s time because God put it there.

WHY THIS MATTERS FOR DWIGHT BAPTIST

This is who we desire to be. A people grounded on the Word of God rather than the opinions of men. We will be honest with you. A preacher cannot fully remove himself from his delivery. His convictions, his experiences, and his personality will shape how he studies and how he speaks. But there is a profound difference between a preacher who stands over the text and bends it toward his ideas, and one who labors under the text and lets it shape him first.

That fidelity — Scripture over personality, text over trend — is what we are committed to at Dwight Baptist. Not because it is our idea, but because it is His.