April 20, 2000
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Yet more John MacArthur
The Consequences of Non-expositional Preaching, Part 1
The first negative tragic consequence of failing to preach expositionally is that it usurps the authority of God over the mind and soul of the hearer. And as a pastor, as your shepherd, as the one accountable to God for your care and your spiritual progress and your spiritual development, there is one very basic foundational reality that I want to establish in your life, and that is that God has total authority over your soul and over your mind, that God is sovereign, not me. That God’s truth is sovereign, not my ideas. That God’s Word reigns over your life, not my insights. It is critical to establish the authority of God over the mind and soul of the hearer. It is the question of authority.
The basic issue then is for you to recognize that the Bible is the Word of God who is absolutely sovereign and it brings to bear its authority on your life. Not just to command you, but to bless you. Not just to convict you, but to encourage you. Not just to make you feel guilty but to bring you comfort. All that comes through the Word of God is intended for your blessing and your benefit. But you must submit to its authority.
A second thing to think about, a failure to preach the Word of God usurps the lordship of Christ over His church. He is the Lord of the church, “I will build My church,” we looked at that in Matthew this morning. He is head of the church repeatedly in the epistles of Paul, Christ is presented as the head of the church. You remember that wonderful text of Ephesians 1:17 and following, that God has made the One who is Lord over everything to be the head of the church. It is such a foundational and such a basic reality to understand that. The only way the Lord can exercise His headship over the church is to be heard by the church. I think we all understand that leadership is communication. How can the head of the church communicate to the church unless He can speak to the church? And He speaks to the church through Scripture.
Thirdly, a failure to preach exposition hinders the work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit uses the Word of God as the means of saving. We are begotten again by the Word of Truth, 1 Peter 1:23. The Spirit uses the Word to sanctify, “Sanctify them by Thy Truth, Thy Word is Truth.” The only tool the Spirit has is the Scripture. And where the Scripture is replaced by anything else, the work of the Spirit of God is hindered.
Fourth, a failure to preach expositionally manifests a lack of submission to Scripture. Now that is unthinkable for a Christian, is it not? You heard one of the folks in Baptism tonight quote that verse, that if you belong to Christ, you will obey Him, John 14. I t is unthinkable that a believer would not submit to Scripture. It is even more unthinkable that a preacher would not submit to Scripture. That reveals an inferior, inadequate love for God, understanding of His glory and His authority, an inadequate and inferior recognition of the honor and glory of Christ and an inadequate and inferior understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit. It is amazing to me how many preachers seem to have no interest in bringing the Word of God and demonstrating thereby that they themselves submit to it.
Number five, failure to preach expositionally, a failure to preach the Scripture from the Scripture, Scripture truth from Scripture context severs the preacher personally from the sanctifying grace of Scripture. James says, “Stop being so many teachers, theirs is a greater condemnation.” The writer of Hebrews says, “We have to give an account to God.” Paul says, “I beat my body into subjection because I don’t want to become disqualified.” In 1 Timothy and in Titus there are requirements for someone who does this. And the first one is that he be above...what?...reproach, that he have no public shame, that he has not brought some kind of scandal on himself and on the church and on the name of the Lord. How does someone who has engaged in this for years and years and years and years, how does someone who does this and is regularly attacking the kingdom of darkness and I’m sure those who through the years and even now are faithful have excited the forces of hell, Satan himself and the demons, who would want to bring down any faithful preacher...how does one survive through all of that? How does one survive all the impulses of the flesh? All the assaults and attacks that come from the inside and the outside through the years and years of ministry. And I will tell you this, that the way you survive is to be a Bible expositor and it’s to your benefit to stay in the same place and do it, then you are forced every week of your life to expose yourself to the sanctifying work of the Word in your own heart.
Number six, failure to preach expositionally removes spiritual depth and transcendence from the souls of people. That is to say it cripples worship, both personal worship and cooperate worship. When you come on a Sunday, or you go to a Bible study, or you go to an opportunity to be taught the Word of God, you are taken down into the depths of Scripture inevitably to places you haven’t been. You say, “Well, I’ve read that many times, I didn’t see that.” You know when your teacher has prepared. You know when your pastor has dug down deep and there’s an exhilarating experience when you discover these great deep truths. And they grab your soul because they’re not just clever insights. You know, there are a lot of people who just go from Sunday to Sunday and hear a clever story and somehow the clever story sticks. But it has no real power. It may titillate a little bit but it doesn’t have any power.
What has power is a truth concerning God, concerning spiritual reality that takes you to a depth you’ve never been to before. But gives you an insight you’ve never had. And as a result of this depth of understanding, there’s a transcendent knowledge and that shows up in your worship. If you understand the full nuances of the doctrine of justification, and you sing hymns about justification, you infuse those hymns with exuberant joy because you get it. That’s why I always say, “I don’t like over-simplified repetitious songs.” I love hymns because they have nuances that only the really informed grasp. And then when you grasp them because they’re rich, they’re nuanced, there are subtitles in there, there is magnificent language that you understand because you understand the doctrine and your worship is enriched and enhanced. Now I’ve said this many times, you have to take people down into the Word to discover the rich truths that are there so that they can go up in transcendent worship. Most churches just kind of live on the flat land in the middle. Don’t think deeply about anything, and therefore their worship is very mundane and it’s nothing more than emotional stimulation. Churches like that get filled up with entertainment because the people really can’t worship. They’re not lost in wonder, love and praise. They’re not in awe of God His glory and His mighty work and His majesty. They sort of trip along in their little casual world with their simplistic ideas.
Number seven, a failure to preach expositionally prevents the preacher from fully speaking for Christ whom he serves. In First Corinthians 2:14-16, we are reminded of a very important spiritual truth and I’ve just been quoting scriptures up to this point, but this one I want to read. “A natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, they are foolishness to him. He cannot understand them because they are spiritually appraised.” So mark it down, folks, an unconverted natural person doesn’t get it...doesn’t understand the things of God. “Who has known the mind of the Lord?” We do. You can ask that question and I’ll say we know the mind of the Lord. What do you mean you know the mind of the Lord? Well, the Lord has revealed His mind here. So, what is my responsibility, that whenever I speak I speak the mind of Christ? How can I do that if I don’t know what is in the book, if I haven’t submitted myself to it?
You should know the basic content of every book in the Bible, give a brief outline of the book and kind of the flow of the logic of the book. And then you should know every key chapter in the Bible and what that key chapter is about and you should know key verses or a couple of verses and what they’re about. And then you should know every main doctrine Scripture reveals and you should be able to explain that doctrine, give a defense of that doctrine in a brief fashion that is crystalized and clarified in your own mind. Because of all things that someone who goes into ministry should be able to do, it is to reveal what the Scripture says. That’s the mind of Christ on everything.
It’s one thing to prepare a sermon and you’ve got all your notes written, it’s something else to have to answer those questions when you’re somewhere else and you don’t have your notes. And somebody asks you such penetrating questions as people ask me all the time, sometimes on television, on radio, they hit me with questions that I could never ever anticipate, never. But if I am going to be a minister of Jesus Christ, I need to be prepared to speak as if it were Christ Himself...I stand in His place.
Eighth, a failure to preach and teach expositionally depreciates by example the spiritual duty and benefit of studying Scripture. If the pastor doesn’t do it, why in the world should I do it? If it’s not valuable to him, how could it be valuable to me? If you don’t need to study the Scripture to be the preacher, you sure don’t need to study the Scripture to be the parishioner. If the Bible is not the consuming passion of the pulpit, why would we expect it to be the consuming passion of the pew? To model a superficial attitude toward Scripture in the pulpit is horrendous because like people, like priest, right? Hosea. People aren’t going to rise any higher than the leadership. If you’re not committed to an intense and faithful and diligent study of the Word of God, don’t expect your people to be either. You’ve just cut them off from their spiritual life because man doesn’t live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. If it doesn’t even interest you, why would you interest anybody else? You’re sending a terrible message to people. The Bible doesn’t matter. The Bible isn’t interesting. There are things better than the Bible. My insights, your insights. Don’t get caught up in Bible study, I certainly don’t. This is horrific. On the other hand, when the Bible is taught and when it is the passion of the pulpit, it inevitably becomes the passion of the pew.
Look for part 2 under Recent Sermons
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