I was asked this question the other day and gave what I thought was a reasonable answer (although I could probably have been clearer!). I have long been a fan of expository preaching, since about 1987 in fact when I was fortunate enough to be going to Westminster Chapel when RT Kendell and then at All Souls, Langham Place from 1988 till the mid 90’s in the time of John Stott and Richard Bewes. I have always loved that sort of preaching but I also love the worship at Pentecostal and charismatic churches where the preaching is perhaps more practical than expositional.
I decided to do a little research into what others thought it was and it seems to bear a remarkable similarity to ice cream! There are as many different views on what expository preaching is as there are flavours of ice cream. In fact, having thought about it I consider there to be more than one right flavour (sorry! – I did of course mean answer!). Let me explain further what I mean but first let me quote one of what I feel are the better definitions I have found. JI Packer is another hero of mine and he gives the following definition in his essay on Charles Simeon in the book “Preach the Word: Essays on Expository Preaching : In Honor of Kent Hughes.”
“…expository preaching is the preaching of the man who knows Holy Scripture to be the living Word of the living God, and who desires only that it should be free to speak its own message to sinful men and women; who therefore preaches from a text, and in preaching labors, as the Puritans would say, to ‘open’ it, or, in [Charles] Simeon’s phrase, to ‘bring out of the text what is there’; whose whole aim in preaching is to show his hearers what the text is saying to them about God and about themselves, and to lead them into what Barth called ‘the strange new world within the Bible’ in order that they may be met by him who is the Lord of that world” (J.I. Packer, “Expository Preaching: Charles Simone and Ourselves”, an essay in “Preach the Word: Essays on Expository Preaching: In Honor of Kent Hughes, page 141.)
Now, back to the ice cream flavours. There has to be a balance in this type of preaching, it is indeed at home and widely used in the classroom and at midweek bible studies. But I also fervently believe that, whilst this style may not be suitable for Sunday mornings, a ‘flavour’ of it is indeed suitable. Sunday morning sermons are not just educational, they also need to be inspirational and envisioning of the receptors (I don’t know why I wrote receptors … I do of course mean the congregation, but as I quite like the word receptors I shall leave it there). Back to ice cream, my favourite is chocolate from a well known American vendor. There are times when I eat chocolate ice cream, times when it is appropriate. However, if I am sharing an ‘ice cream fest’ with a friend who absolutely hates chocolate flavour then it becomes inappropriate and there is a need to find another flavour of ice cream … say Cherry ice cream which we both like. This does not change the ice cream into something else but is merely a different flavour of it which is more suitable for the occasion.
In the same way then expository preaching has different flavours, there is a place for the in depth lecture for the theology student, a place for the deeper study in the midweek meetings and a place for the expositional sermon that includes not only an unpacking of the passage but also inspirational and envisioning. The passage can still be expositorised (I may have just made that word up!) without blinding the hearers with lessons in Hebrew and Greek but still in such a way that they end up with a good understanding of the passage with some modern day comparisons.
I believe that this is one of the ways we can build our relationship with God, to really understand what the significance of events were in a passage as they unfold, to learn a little about the culture of the time adds to that significance and to further understand how his hearers would have understood the events at the time all lead us closer to our God.
These are only my initial thought on the subject and will probably change over time …. Well… after all… I wouldn’t want to be accused of being dogmatic would I J