Kennystix's podcast
Why Expositional Preaching Is Particularly Glorifying to God
The following resource is from DesiringGod.org. Before I pray, let me give you an outline of where I'm going so it might help you navigate since it's a little bit of hodgepodge. There are four parts to this message. Number one, reflections on the kind of preaching I am praying that God would raise up in these days which is earnest and deeply aware of the weight of the glory of God, a kind of preaching. Number two, a portrayal of the glory of God as best I can lay it out. Number three, how people awaken to the glory of God, what would need to happen in our church for people to awaken to the glory of God and treasure it in a way that's fitting. Number four, how this all calls us to a kind of preaching that I call expository exaltation. So those are the four units of thought. Let's pray. Everything else but your words centered in your gospel concerning your son on behalf of your glory is sand, sinking sand. I feel my feet so often on the brink of quicksand everywhere I turn and I'm so thankful for a rock, so thankful for the rock. And so now I pray for help in unfolding the rock glory, the glorious rock of the gospel and preaching and your value in the world. I'm so thankful that the last thing you said in Matthew was, "I'll be with you, I'll be with you tonight, I'm with you, be with you on the plane tomorrow, be with you five years from now. I'll never leave you. Thank you so much for being our help. Lord, give a heart that resonates with your truth, protect these brothers from error. Now, and guard my mouth, magnify your son." In his name I pray, amen. George Woodfield believed in preaching and he gave his life to it and he looked out over the terrain of the 18th century, Britain and America which he saw as a wasteland and he summoned by prayer preachers into existence with words that I want to use tonight. I am longing that the Lord would use this conference to summon into being a kind of preacher and I cannot say it better than Woodfield. So here's what he said, "Oh, that we shall see the great head of the church once more raise up unto himself certain young men whom he may use in this glorious employ." And what manner of men will they be? Men mighty in the scriptures, their lives dominated by a sense of the greatness, the majesty and the holiness of God and their minds and hearts aglow with the great truths of the doctrines of grace. They will be men who have learned what it is to die to self, to human aims and personal ambitions, men who are willing to be fools for Christ's sake, who will bear reproach and falsehood, who will labor and suffer, and whose supreme desire will be not to gain earth's accolades but to win the master's approbation when they shall appear before his awesome judgment seat. They will be men who will preach with broken hearts and tear-filled eyes and upon whose ministries God will grant an extraordinary effusion of the Holy Spirit who will witness signs and wonders following in the transformation of multitudes of lives. Mighty in the scriptures, a glow with the great truths of the doctrines of grace, dead to self, willing to labor and suffer indifferent to the accolades of man, broken for sin and the one I want to focus on dominated by a sense of the greatness and the majesty and the holiness of God. Whitfield believed that preaching was heralding the Word of God from that kind of heart. Preaching is not conversation. Preaching is not discussion. Preaching is not casual talk about religious things. Preaching is not teaching, preaching is the heralding of a message permeated by a sense of the greatness and majesty and holiness of God. It can be any topic under the sun and that topic is taken into the blazing center of the greatness and glory and holiness of God in the Word of God. That was Whitfield's view of preaching and in the last century, the man who embodied it best was Martin Lloyd-Jones, who served Westminster Chapel for 30 years in London, in J.I. Packer, who read this testimony perhaps, when he was 22 years old, student said that he heard Lloyd-Jones preach every Sunday night in the year 1948-49 and he said, "I had never heard such preaching," which by the way is why today so many people say so many minimizing and foolish things about preaching. They have never heard it. They don't know what it is. They have no basis for judgment as they belittle it and call for alternatives that are more effective, Lloyd-Jones said, "It came to me with the force of electric shock, bringing more of a sense of God than any other man he had known." That's what Whitfield meant and oh that God would raise up in this room and across this country and the world, young preachers, who leave their hearers with a spiritual sense of shock, at the sense of God, some sense of the infinite weight of the glory of God. It's my loin, that's my prayer for this conference and for you, that God would raise up thousands of brokenhearted, Bible-saturated preachers who are dominated by a sense of the greatness and the majesty and the holiness of God as he has been decisively revealed in Jesus Christ through the gospel of Christ crucified, risen, and reigning today over all nations, all armies, all cancer cells, and all politics, and all churches, and all false religions, that there would be a gripping of pastors today, of the amazing weight, of the absolute claims, of the lordship of Christ over the nations, and over everybody in your city they will bow or they will burn. There is no doubt about it, Jesus Christ lays absolute claim on planet earth. Everybody in your city must bow their knee, that must grip pastors. God did not ordain the cross of Christ or create the lake of fire in order to communicate the insignificance of belittling his glory. The death of the Son of God and the damnation of unrepentant human beings are the loudest buckshouts conceivable under heaven that God is infinitely holy, that sin is infinitely offensive, that wrath is infinitely just, and that grace is infinitely precious, and that the brief little life that you and I live and that everybody in our churches lives is going to issue very quickly, either in everlasting joy or everlasting pain. This has got to grip us, there is a weight to this office. Fire brothers, is this weight going to be felt if not from you? Veggie tales? Not in a million years. Radio, television, discussion groups, emergent conversations? If not from you in this pulpit, where? God planned for His Son to be crucified and for hell to be terrible so that we would have the clearest witnesses possible to what is at stake when we preach. What gives preaching its seriousness is that the mantle of preaching is soaked in the blood of Jesus and singed with the fire of hell. Are you wearing that mantle? There's the mantle that turns talkers into preachers, yet tragically some of the most prominent so-called evangelical voices today diminish the horror of the cross and the horror of hell, the cross being stripped of its power to bear the punishment that is coming. And hell, demythologized into self dehumanization and social miseries in the world, all that God would raise a generation, many generations, who would see that the world is not overrun with a sense of God's seriousness. There is no excess. Earnestness comes these days rare. Heaven, hell, God, sin, salvation, that's our life and it doesn't get any weightier than that. And therefore today the joy of millions of Christians is paper thin. By the millions, people, including pastors, are amusing themselves to death with DVDs and 107-inch TV screens and games on their cell phones and slapstick worship, while leaders of major world religion write letters to the West like this, "The first thing we are calling you to is Islam." It is the religion of enjoining the good and forbidding the evil with hand and tongue and heart. It is the religion of jihad in the way of Allah, so that Allah's word and religion reign supreme, then these spokesman publicly, breathtakingly, blessed suicide bombers who blow up children in front of falafel shops and call it the way to paradise. And yet, incomprehensibly, incomprehensibly, in this Christ diminishing soul-destroying age, books, seminars, divinity schools, homiletics teachers are saying to young pastors, "Lighten up, get funny, do something amusing," to which I want to say, "Where is the Spirit of Jesus?" If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me for he who would save his life will lose it, and he who loses his life from my sake and the gospels will save it. If you do not renounce all your possessions, you cannot be my disciple. If you do not hate your mother and your father, you cannot be my disciple. Just the dead, buried their dad, follow me, become a slave of everybody, fear the one who can cast both soul and body into hell, yes, I tell you, fear him. Some of you they're going to put to death, don't be afraid, none of the hair of your head is going to perish on that block. Lighten up, Jesus, get funny. From my perspective, which feels very close to eternity these days, these councils are insane, they're insane. That section number one, reflections on the kind of preaching I'm summoning you to, rooted in an earnestness that feels the weight of the glory of what we're about. Section number two, what you believe about the necessity of preaching and the nature of preaching is governed by your sense of the glory of God and how you believe people awaken to it. So those are my next two units. What you believe about the glory of God, and then thirdly will be, how do people awaken to this? So section two, my sense of the glory of God. From beginning to end in the Bible, nothing is more ultimate in the mind and heart of God than the glory of God. The beauty of God, the radiance of His perfections, those would be my synonyms for glory, beauty, the radiance, the out streaming of the panorama and the fullness of His perfections as it streams out. That is the ultimate allegiance and commitment in the mind and heart of God. Everywhere you look, never see an exception to this. You read the whole Bible and every place that God makes explicit, the ultimate reason for why He's doing what He's doing, the answer is always and without exception the same. For my glory, or for my name, we are predestined for His glory, Ephesians 1, 6. We are created for His glory, Isaiah 43, 7. We are elected for His glory, Jeremiah 13, 11. He saved His people from Egypt for His glory, Psalm 106, 8. He rescued from the exile, Isaiah 48, 9 to 11 for His glory. He sent Christ into the world so that the Gentiles would praise God for the glory of His mercy, Romans 59. He commands His people, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, you all to my glory for Corinthians 10, 31. He will send Jesus a second time so that the Redeem will marvel at His glory, 2 Thessalonians 59, and therefore the mission of the church is declare His glory among the nations, His marvelous works among all the peoples. It is so crystal clear if you read the Bible straight through asking the question, what is the ultimate value in the mind and heart of God? It is God and His great glory. That's going to affect your preaching to the depths if you get this. If you feel this, if you sense the wonder of it, there are a hundred more places we could go to that are driving us back up into God's ultimate allegiance to God. Nothing affects preaching more deeply than to be struck almost speechless, almost, by the passion of God for the glory of God. What is clear from the whole range of biblical revelation is that God's ultimate allegiance is to know Himself perfectly and to love Himself infinitely and then thirdly to share that with you. From all eternity, the ever-existing, never-becoming, always-perfect God has known Himself and loved Himself perfectly. He has eternally seen His beauty reflected back to Him in His Son and He has eternally savored His beauty infinitely. He has no needs, for He has no imperfections, He has no inclinations to evil because He has no deficiencies that would tempt Him to do wrong. He is, therefore, the holiest and the happiest being, not only there is but that can be conceived. I challenge you, you cannot conceive of a greater happiness than omnipotent power engaged in the omnipotent enjoyment of infinite glory. You cannot conceive of a greater happiness. And therefore God, from all eternity, has infinitely known Himself perfectly, infinitely enjoyed what He knows perfectly and now the wonder. He doesn't tend to share this with us. Knowing and enjoying His glory is the reason He created the world. He would bring you, He would bring you to know Him and to enjoy Him the way He knows Himself and the way He enjoys Himself. Indeed, His purpose is that the very knowledge that He has of Himself and the very joy that He has in Himself would become your knowledge and your joy so that you know Him with the knowledge that He has of Himself and you love Him and delight in Him with the delight that He has in Himself. I think that's the meaning of John 1726, which says, Father, I pray that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them. The Father's knowledge of and joy in the radiance of His glory called Jesus will be in us because Jesus is in us, it is breathtaking, that you could know God with the knowledge of God and that you could love God with the love of God. If you ask, how does God's aim to share His eternal experience of knowing Himself perfectly and delighting in Himself infinitely, how does His purpose to share that with human beings relate to His love for us? Because not infrequently I'm asked, where's the love of God fit into your glory system? The answer at this point is that's the definition of His love. God's purpose to share with sinners the knowledge that He has of Himself and the love that He has for Himself is the meaning of love. Then John says, 1 John 4, 8, God is love. I take Him to mean it is God's very nature to share the knowledge that He has of Himself and the delight that He takes in Himself with sinners, though it cost Him the death of His Son. That's my understanding of God is love. The means that this means that God's aim to display His glory and my delight in that glory are in perfect harmony. You don't honor fully what you don't enjoy; this is what so burdens me. You do not honor fully what you don't enjoy. God is not glorified fully by being known rightly. He is glorified by being known and so enjoyed that our lives are transformed into the kind of lives that display His infinite worth. That's a pretty radical kind of life, too, because most lives look like we treasure the world. If you want to live a kind of life that looks like you treasure the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords and not the earth, it's got to change from the way the world lives. And Jesus said two things to emphasize His role in giving us the knowledge and the joy of God. Listen carefully, Matthew 11, 27. No one knows the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him, 2 John 15, 11. These things I have spoken to you that my joy may be in you and your joy may be full. I take those two texts to mean this. We know the Father with the knowledge of the Son, and we know and enjoy the Father with the joy of the Son. Jesus has made us partakers of His own knowledge of God, and He has made us partakers of His own enjoyment of God. That's got to become visible. You can't see my joy. It's totally invisible. God can see it. He knows whether I'm real or not, but you can't see it. You can't see my knowledge either. These two massive realities are invisible to the world until they change you, which is why Jesus said, "Let your light, the light of my infinite value and glory and beauty and treasure to you. Let your light so shine that men may see your sacrificial, radical, counter-cultural, inexplicable, good deeds and give glory not to you, but to your Father." That's a miracle when that happens. The greatest ethical challenge is so to live that men don't glorify you for living that way. But God, I do think this is a princess. I do think the key to that is in the context of Matthew 5. Rejoice in that day when they revile you and persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you falsely. Rejoice. For great is your reward in heaven. If your life has about it the behavior and the flavor that can only be explained by living for an other world, people might start asking you the reason for the hope that is in you. But if your life looks like you have all the same treasures and lean on all the same securities that the world does, nobody's going to ask you that question. And nobody's going to glorify God for your good deeds. They're going to write about you. It's an impossible calling and one that we should plead with the Lord to help us. It works like this, "When the glory of God is the treasure of our lives, we will not lay up treasures on earth, but spend them for the spread of His glory. We will not covet but overflow with liberality. We will not crave the praise of men, but forget ourselves in praising God. We will not be mastered by sinful, sensual pleasures, but sever the root by the power of a superior promise. We will not nurse a wounded ego or cherish a grudge or nurture a vengeful spirit, but we'll hand over our cause to the God who judges justly and we will bless those who hate us. Every sin flows from a failure to treasure the glory of God above all things." I'll say that again, "Every sin flows from a failure to treasure God's glory above all things." Therefore, one crucial, visible way to display the truth and value of God is humble, sacrificial, 59 service of other people that flows from a fountain of God's all-satisfying glory. That's the end of section two, reflections on the glory of God, third section. How do people come to awaken to this? This is your goal as a pastor, I hope. I want to so live, preach, pray, lead, suffer that my people won't scratch their heads at a message like this. But everything in them will say, "Yes!" How do you awaken a heartfelt "Yes," more, more hymn, fewer stories, more hymn? Here's my answer. You can open your Bibles to 2 Corinthians chapter 3 and you know where I'm going. So clear, so simple, anybody could preach the rest of this message and say exactly what you know I'm going to say because it's just right on the face of the text. 2 Corinthians 3, 18 to 4, 6 will take a little piece at a time. That book you have in your hand, God is the gospel, is my overflow of meditation on these verses. That's all it is. I've been living with these verses for a long time, longing to get into these verses, live these verses, wear these verses, experience these verses, especially verses 4 and 6 but we'll start at 3, 18 because we're pastors and we care about how people awaken to the glory of God and get so changed by it that the world is helped and saved. Corinthians 3, 18 and we all with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed. There's no more important phrase in the Bible for preachers than that. Does that control your ministry? I mean our ministry is about transforming people, there it is, crystal clear, beholding the glory of the Lord, they are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory so thankful it's incremental because otherwise I'd be dead. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit, stop there, beholding the glory of the Lord we are being transformed from one degree of glory to the other. This is God's way of changing people and if you say to me, "Does it work?" Then I think you should keep on doing it anyway. There are so many people who make quick judgments about what works and what doesn't work and then leave such a clear text for some new technique of changing people. People are changed the way God wants them to change, not the way you want them to change, the way God wants them to change by beholding His glory. Suppose you do find another way that works. Have you produced what God wants, namely glory, seeing, driven change? And if you've produced another kind of change, He may not be interested. He wants the kind of change that comes from beholding the glory of God. Our job is to make it seem that's our job, that's the only way to change people. How does that happen? Well let's read verses 3 through 6 of 2 Corinthians 4. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. This is a sentence like that's just, "Oh, there are people in the category of the perishing who will never see. You're going to let your failure with them alter your method." Even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. In their case, the God of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers to keep them, here comes what has held me captive for years, it was longing, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel, of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. You don't need to figure out who the Lord is in 3.18, it's yes. Christ and the Father, one, the glory revealed in the God-Man. The gospel is a gospel of the glory of Christ. We behold, now we're getting real close to the center of the gospel and close to the center of preaching. We behold the glory of the Lord most clearly and most crucially in the gospel. So much so that Paul calls it the gospel of the glory of Christ. Here's why this is so massively important for preaching. The gospel is a message, it's words, sentences, proclamation and here's the paradox. We must see, we must see glory by hearing what comes out of a preacher's mouth. Isn't that odd? You see with your ears. Your people see if they see it all with their ears. This is a message. Let me give you an illustration of what I mean, seeing with your ears. You remember Samuel? In Samuel's day there was, it says in 1 Samuel 3, 1, no frequent vision of the Lord. It was a sad day, it was a day like our day, a famine of seeing and savoring the glory of God, a famine in our churches, of seeing and savoring the glory of God. That was Samuel's day when God raised up Samuel, made God raise up many samples. Here's what happened. End of chapter 3 for Samuel 3, 21, you just note it instead of looking to it, perhaps. And the Lord appeared again at Shiloh, raises pretty high expectations for a Theophany. He appeared again at Shiloh, for the Lord revealed Himself to Samuel at Shiloh by the Word of the Lord. Isn't that incredible? The Lord appeared by the Word of the Lord. The Lord appeared, appeared by the Word of the Lord. Jesus said seeing, they do not see, meaning we've got two sets of eyes. These, these, Paul called them the eyes of the heart, Ephesians 3, 19. And when we preach with our mouths, words and sentences about Christ and about the cross and about the resurrection and all that it purchased, especially God, we are aiming with these words at those eyes. The way you see glory today in this dispensation between the first and second coming, the way you see glory here as, as 1 Peter 1, 8, groaningly says, now you love Him, though you don't see Him. The way we see Him, because we must see Him according to 2 Corinthians 3, 18, is by hearing the gospel. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of Christ because through the Word of Christ Christ appears to the eyes of the heart. And what appears is glory, the glory of the cross, the glory of the incarnation, the glory of the God-man spread out in four gospels for us to enjoy. That's your job. That's your job. That's the end of section three. Finally. And for how does all that relate to expository exaltation, my definition of preaching, expository exaltation with a "you," not an "a"? Do you all know this word? Exalt. To exalt over something, be thrilled with it, be struck by it, celebrate it. Be glad about it. Expository exaltation. So here's how we got here. If it is the purpose of God to display His glory in the world, and if we display it because we've been changed by knowing and enjoying it, and if we came to know and enjoy it by beholding it, and if we behold it best in the gospel, and if the gospel is word or proclamation, then the implication is preaching is essential, and explaining and opening and heralding the gospel and the glory of Christ in the gospel is our central job. That's the way it flows from creation to eternity. Expository exaltation, linger with me over both for just a moment. Expository, why? Because the gospel comes in Word. It's an amazing thing that Paul put so much stock in the gospel of the glory of Christ as Word. Let me try to unpack this for just a moment. This is together for the gospel. Knowing the meaning of the gospel is a huge part of this conference. So I'm going to give you my take on five essential dimensions, call it components of the gospel, and you judge, because every one of these begs for exposition. That's why I'm doing this, the expository side of expository exaltation. Number one, the gospel is a message about historical events, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, 1 Corinthians 15, 3, summoning us, therefore, to open them for our people through expositions of narrative texts, texts that explain and narrate the events. There is no gospel without the person, the life, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus. Those events are essential to the gospel. Number two, the gospel is a message about what those events achieved. Well the word achieved, events achieved. For example, the payment for our sins, the completion of perfect obedience, the removal of the wrath of God, the installation of King Jesus as crucified Messiah and Lord of the universe, the destruction of death, all of those before you were ever born, or had any experience of them, they were achieved by the events. And they beg for exposition, all of them. And people are starving to have these achievements of our Christ open for them faithfully from texts. Number three, the gospel is a message about the transfer, that's the word I'm circling now, of the achievements to particular persons, and how that happens is the gospel. If it happens by works, there's no gospel. If we say those events existed and those achievements happened and you get them by works, the gospel is over. And therefore, number three is by faith alone. Are we grafted into Christ where his righteousness and everything becomes made over to us? So the way the transfer happens from the achievement to the experience is gospel. Now we've got event, we've got achievement, and we've got the way of transfer. Number four, the gospel is the message about the good things that are now true about us because the achievement has been applied to us. For example, God is now only merciful to you and never wrathful. That's called propitiation. Secondly, you are now counted righteous in Christ. That's called justification. Third, you are now freed from the guilt and the power of sin. That's called redemption. And fourth, you are now positionally and progressively holy, sanctified. We call that sanctification, all of which begs for exposition so that your people can live in the glory of the gospel, the glory of Christ shining through such awesome achievements, awesome transfer, awesome experience. What pastors give their people that they, when this banquet table is spread and her people are so hungry and they don't know, they don't know what you might bring them. Oh, what a blessing you could be. Number five, the gospel is a message about the glorious God himself. As our final, eternal, all satisfying treasure. And my reason for writing that book was because I think even gospel loving pastors stop it for usually. Giving the impression that justification is the end of the line, or forgiveness of sins is the end of the line, or liberation from sin, redemption is the end of the line. Or having wrath removed and escape from hell is the end of the line. This is no gospel if that's the end of the line. I mean, ask your people, this is a very frightening question. If you can have heaven, perfect health, all the friends you've ever wanted, all the physical pleasures purified that you've ever wanted, and God's not there, would that be okay? So many evangelicals would say, yes, how they wouldn't say it out loud. And we might, you might now be saying, I've never directed people beyond the good news of justification. I've never directed them beyond the good news of forgiveness of sins. If I mistreat my wife and she's angry at me, and I know that what I need is to ask for forgiveness, what do I want? My wife, I want her back, I don't like this ice in the air, I don't like her back to me at the sink. What good is forgiveness without that? And yet we seem to stop at level four. Those are my five elements, components of the gospel, and they all beg for explanation unpacking, unfolding, and finally woe to us, brothers, if we do this without exaltation over the word. If we open our babbles and put it on the pulpit and engage now to explain these glories and our face and our tone and our demeanor and our life is dull, we lie about the gospel. Look how many truth sentences come out of our mouths, we betray the value of the gospel and the value of the gospel is as important as the truth of the gospel. If you do not value the gospel, you perish. No matter how many right thoughts you think about God and his gospel, therefore when I define preaching as expository exaltation, I mean two wings on a plane and when one falls off, it crashes. Others don't lie about the preciousness of the gospel by your demeanor over this word. My prayer again is that God may be pleased to raise up here, I'm going to pray in just 30 seconds or so. God would raise up here preachers whose exposition of Bible texts is worthy of the truth of this book and its gospel and whose exaltation over it is worthy of the glory of God revealed in these texts. Let's pray. Father in heaven calling men into the ministry of the gospel, the gospel and then inflaming them is your work. I can't do it so long and plead with you now that here in this room, there would be an awakening to the weight of your glory, your radiance, your beauty, everything that shines out from you in the gospel of Christ crucified and risen and reigning over the universe. That that would land, take root, awaken, purify, empower pastors and Lord may the ripple effect of this conference be for the nations. Oh, that the church in Britain and the church in America and the church in all the countries represented in this room and beyond would inflame, would awaken to the value, the infinite value of the treasure that you are. Oh, that our hearts would have a Holy Spirit given capacity to delight in you with the delight of your son, these things I have spoken to you that my joy might be in you and your joy might be full in my father. Oh, God, make us branches abiding in that all satisfying vine. We want a glory in our Redeemer, we want our people to see the Redeemer, we want to lift up our voices, lift up our lives, lay them out that people might come to see the glory of the Redeemer, Lord, whatever it means, and I'm sure I haven't done it justice, whatever second Corinthians 4, 4 means and the miracle of the awakening to it in 4, 6, whatever it means, come and do it.
Preaching is not conversation or discussion. It’s not casual talk about religious things. Preaching is heralding a message permeated by the sense of God’s greatness.