What is expository preaching?

Question 09028.

Expository preaching is preaching in which the point of the passage is the point of the sermon. The preacher works through a text, explains what it means in its own context, and then presses that meaning on the congregation. The shape of the sermon comes from the shape of the text rather than being imposed on it from outside.

That sounds obvious when you write it down, and it is anything but common. A great deal of preaching takes a verse as a springboard and then goes somewhere the author never intended. I have done it myself, early on, and I am not proud of the years it took me to see the difference.

What Expository Preaching Actually Is

The classic definition is that the preacher’s authority is derived rather than personal. He stands up with an open Bible and says, in effect, this is what God has said here, and this is what it means for us. His job is to make the text clear and unavoidable. If the passage is a warning, the sermon warns. If it is a comfort, the sermon comforts. If it is an argument, the sermon argues it.

Usually this means preaching consecutively through books of the Bible, sometimes over years. That is not part of the definition, but it is the most natural way to do it and it brings its own protections. Expository preaching can also be done on a single passage, on a topic where each supporting text is genuinely expounded, or on a doctrine traced through Scripture. What makes it expository is not the length of the series but the direction of authority.

What It Is Not

It is not a running commentary. A sermon that walks through a passage phrase by phrase, explaining Greek words and cross referencing at length without ever landing on the congregation, is a lecture. Expository preaching has to arrive somewhere. Nehemiah 8:8 says they read from the book, from the Law of God, clearly, and they gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading. Both halves are in there: clarity and understanding.

It is also not dullness with a proof text. Some preachers have used the expository label to excuse sermons that are shapeless, over long and unprepared, on the grounds that they are just explaining the Bible. Faithfulness and tedium are not the same thing, and the men in Scripture who spoke for God were vivid. Being boring about the most interesting news in the world takes some doing.

The Biblical Warrant

2 Timothy 4:2 is the charge: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. The object of the verb is the word. Not the preacher’s insight, not the mood of the moment, not the needs identified by a survey. The Greek kerysso means to herald, to announce publicly what somebody else has said, which is precisely the posture expository preaching adopts.

Nehemiah 8:8 gives the practice. Ezra and the Levites read the Law and gave the sense, and the people wept and then rejoiced because they had understood. Acts 20:27 has Paul telling the Ephesian elders that he did not shrink from declaring to them the whole counsel of God, which is a claim about comprehensiveness rather than about eloquence. You do not deliver the whole counsel of God by preaching your favourite themes.

Why Expository Preaching Protects a Church

It gives the congregation the whole Bible rather than the preacher’s preferences. Every one of us has hobby horses and blind spots, and a man free to choose his subject every week will unconsciously avoid what he finds difficult. Work through Romans and you will have to preach on wrath. Work through James and you will have to preach on money and the tongue. The text sets the agenda, and the congregation gets fed things they would never have asked for.

It also trains people to read. When a church watches its minister handle a passage in context week after week, the members start doing the same thing at home. Over years, expository preaching builds a congregation that can spot a bad argument from a visiting speaker, which is worth more to a church than any programme it might run.

Why It Protects the Preacher

This is the part younger ministers underestimate. When you preach through a book, nobody can accuse you of aiming at them. If a difficult subject comes up because it is the next passage, that is between the congregation and the Holy Spirit. I have preached sermons that landed squarely on a live situation in our church, and the fact that the passage arrived on its own removed any suggestion that I had gone looking for it.

It protects you spiritually as well. Expository preaching keeps forcing you into texts you would rather avoid, and you cannot preach them honestly without letting them work on you first. A preacher who chooses his own subjects can drift for years without ever being confronted by Scripture. The discipline of the next passage does not allow that, and I have needed it more than the congregation has.

Common Objections

The first is that people today want relevance rather than exposition. My answer is that the Bible addresses what human beings actually are: anxious, guilty, mortal, made for God and running from Him. Preaching that gives them practical tips for the week ahead is dealing with symptoms. There is nothing more relevant than being told the truth about yourself and then told what God has done about it.

The second is that expository preaching leaves urgent matters unaddressed. That is a fair concern, and the answer is not to abandon the method but to hold it sensibly. When something serious happens in the world or in the church, I will set the series aside and preach to it. Working through books is a discipline, not a straitjacket, and a minister who cannot interrupt himself has confused the tool with the task.

A third objection is that consecutive preaching bores young people and drives them away. I have not found it so, and I would gently suggest that what actually drives them away is being talked down to. Teenagers can follow an argument perfectly well when somebody takes the trouble to make one, and they can tell the difference between a preacher who has done the work and one who has not.

What It Demands of the Preacher

Work, mostly. You cannot preach a passage you have not understood, which means hours with the text before any hours with the commentaries. It means asking what the author was doing, who he was writing to, how the passage functions in the argument, and only then what it says to us. It also means resisting the sermon you already have in your head and letting the text overrule it, which is harder than it sounds.

And it demands that you actually apply it. Explanation without application leaves people informed and unmoved. The work of the last third of a sermon is to press the truth into ordinary life: into the marriage, the workplace, the bank account, the illness. That is where expository preaching becomes pastoral rather than academic, and it is the part I find costliest to prepare. I have written more on this in my article on the role of a pastor.

What It Asks of the Congregation

Patience, chiefly. A series through a long book will contain weeks where the passage is difficult or unglamorous, and the payoff comes later. Bring your Bible and keep it open. Read the passage before Sunday. Ask questions afterwards, and ask the awkward ones, because a preacher who is never questioned gets lazy.

It also asks that you value it when you have it. Expository preaching is not the norm across British churches, and congregations that have been fed this way for years sometimes do not realise what they possess. If your minister is quietly working through Scripture week by week, tell him it matters. Related reading here would be what makes a church biblical, how pastors should be trained and called, and the NET Bible notes on Nehemiah 8.

So, now what?

If you preach, take the next step rather than a heroic one. Pick a short book, give yourself proper time in the text, and let the passage set your outline. Philippians, 1 John and Jonah are all forgiving places to start. You will preach worse before you preach better, and that is the ordinary cost of learning anything.

If you sit under preaching, do the work of a hearer. Turn up expecting God to speak through an ordinary man handling an ancient text, because that is exactly what He has promised to do. And pray for the person in the pulpit on Saturday night rather than judging him on Sunday afternoon. When did you last tell your minister that a sermon had changed something?

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)