In certain traditional Scottish Presbyterian churches, a few minutes before a worship service begins, the parish official ascends the stairs of the pulpit carrying a large Bible. Laying the book in its place, he marks the passages for that morning with ribbon markers. After a brief pause, he then descends the stairs and disappears.
When the service begins, the official returns, this time in front of the minister. He steps aside, allowing the minister to make his way into the pulpit. Then the official follows behind him and closes the door. (These pulpits are much larger than what most of us are used to!) The minister remains locked, essentially, in the pulpit with his Bible.
Although these proceedings are by no means a standard requirement for faithful churches, they do communicate the centrality of God’s Word in a worship service. While the minister stands over the book physically, in reality he stands beneath its authority. Whatever else happens in the service, it’s clear he will preach the Bible by preaching the Bible.
True preaching bears the marks of doctrinal clarity, a sense of gravity, and convincing argumentation. Tragically, much of what constitutes preaching today would be unrecognizable to Christians in generations past. It pays scant attention to the Bible, is human-focused, and rarely makes more than a superficial impact on its hearers. In the absence of bread, the masses have become accustomed to cake.
In our day and in certain contexts, the expositor of Scripture has been eclipsed by a number of alternative personas. Identifying and understanding them will help us to better ensure that the preaching in our churches is indeed what it ought to be.
The Cheerleader
Regardless of the passage in view, this is the preacher who’s always positively inspirational. A good Sunday for the cheerleader is one where his people laugh, are affirmed and affirming, and leave more self-assured than when they arrived. In this paradigm, a quest for personal wholeness replaces a concern for holiness.
True preaching bears the marks of doctrinal clarity, a sense of gravity, and convincing argumentation.
This preacher prefers to leave the teaching of the Bible—e.g., wrestling with difficult doctrines or exegetical study of a text in its context—to small groups or midweek Bible studies. His task is instead to “pump them up” and prepare the people for the coming week. Consequently, the sheep leave the building stirred but not strengthened.
The Conjurer
When the congregation declares, “Wasn’t it amazing what the preacher got out of that text?” we shouldn’t immediately assume that’s a good thing. It isn’t enough to refer to the Bible every now and again in a sermon, speaking generic truths about God. Faithful preaching proclaims truth from specific texts, showing others the biblical basis for what he’s saying.
R. W. Dale, professor of divinity at (a very different) Yale in 1876, shared with his students,
I always think of the tricks of those ingenious gentlemen who entertain the public by rubbing a sovereign between their hands till it becomes a canary, and drawing out of their coat sleeves half-a-dozen brilliant glass globes filled with water, and with four or five gold fish swimming in each of them. For myself, I like to listen to a good preacher, and I have no objection in the world to be amused by the tricks of a clever conjurer; but I prefer to keep the conjuring and preaching separate: conjuring on Sunday morning, conjuring in church, conjuring with texts of Scripture, is not quite to my taste.1
A solid conviction that the Bible is the Word of God will keep preachers from “conjuring up” meanings that aren’t in the text. The sermon isn’t a product to pitch in a winsome way. It’s the proclamation and application of divine truth.
The Storyteller
This man has convinced himself that since everyone loves a good story, and since people are less inclined to follow the exposition of the Bible, it’s okay if he works to develop his storytelling gift at the neglect of the hard work of Bible exposition.
Clearly, stories can be useful. They were part of Jesus’ teachings, after all. But the fact that Jesus used earthly stories with heavenly meaning doesn’t grant today’s preacher license for telling stories devoid of divine meaning and that have little earthly use.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones, in his book Preaching and Preachers, describes some men as “essayists rather than preachers”2—men full of literary flourish and expression but devoid of biblical content and substance. Best that stories are instead used sparingly, intentionally, and for illustrative purposes.
The Entertainer
Modern worship gatherings can, at their worst, foster an approach in the preacher’s mind which makes him something of a performer rather than a pastor. They may also foster an environment in which the people come to sit back and relax, assessing the performance instead of possessing a heart attitude of obedience to the truths preached.
A solid conviction that the Bible is the Word of God will keep preachers from conjuring up meanings that aren’t in the text.
There’s all the difference in the world between the congregation trained for entertainment and the one hungry for exposition. The former says, “Let’s see how Pastor does this morning. We’ll give him marks out of ten for length, humor, and transparency.” As soon as the preacher starts playing to his audience in these terms, he becomes an entertainer.
But the church that gathers for the exposition of Scripture has a different heart posture, saying, “Lord, we come now to hear from You in Your Word. We ask You to speak to us.”
The Systematizer
The minister who views a biblical text as a backdrop for or springboard into a doctrinal lecture may well fit this category. Instead of exegeting a passage and drawing doctrine from it, he begins with doctrine and finds a verse that may or may not support it. He puts the doctrinal framework first and the text second.
No doubt, a pastor’s theological framework affects how he understands the Bible. But faithful preachers must be careful to have Scripture rule their frameworks and not the other way around. People shouldn’t be looking for a pastor’s theological framework; they should hunger for—and be served—the Word of God.
The Psychologist
Many contemporary pulpits are filled with pseudopsychologists: purveyors of “helpful insights” with little reference to the Bible. This sad substitute creeps in subtly. It’s not that these men overtly set aside the Bible. In fact, if asked, they may say, “We’re teaching the Bible week in and week out; we just have a kind of fill-in-the-blanks approach”—“Seven Principles for Effective Fathering,” “The Top Ten Challenges Facing Couples Today,” and the like.
But walk the aisles of these congregations, and hopefully you will hear the people saying, “Bring out the Book” (Neh. 8:1 NIV)—“Just give us Bible!”
No Real Substitute
Each of these sad substitutes is no real replacement for exposition at all. God saves, sanctifies, and keeps His church through the preaching of His Word (2 Tim. 3:16–4:2). If today’s church is to succeed in her mission, then she must reclaim the centrality of biblical preaching.
James W. Alexander, writing about Scottish Presbyterians in an earlier era, paints a picture of the kind of effects true preaching can have on a church:
Every man and every woman, nay, almost every child, carried his pocket-Bible to church, and not only looked out the text, but verified each citation; and as the preaching was in great part of the expository kind, the necessary consequence was, that the whole population became intimately acquainted with the structure of every book in the Bible, and were able to recall every passage with its appropriate accompanying truths.3
May God renew in the hearts of ministers a devotion to preaching the Bible!
This article was adapted from the sermon “What Happened to Expository Preaching?” by Alistair Begg.
-
R. W. Dale, “The Preparation of Sermons,” in Nine Lectures on Preaching (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1877), 127. ↩︎
-
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1971), 15. ↩︎
-
James W. Alexander, Thoughts on Preaching: Being Contributions to Homiletics (1864; repr., Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1975), 240. ↩︎
