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Expository Preaching in a
Postmodern World
by
John F. MacArthur, Jr.
Copyright 2002 Grace Community Church. All
rights reserved.
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A doctoral student recently
interviewed John MacArthur for a dissertation about preaching in a
postmodern world. The following is a transcript of that interview.
Over the course of your ministry, why have you remained committed to
expository preaching over other preaching paradigms?
Well first, because it is a biblical mandate. It doesn’t fluctuate with
culture, with expectations, with times or seasons. Expository preaching
is the best way to preach the Bible. If every word of God is pure, if
every word of God is true, then every word needs to be dealt with. And
expository preaching is only way you actually come to grips with every
word in the Scriptures.
Secondly, expository preaching familiarizes people with the Scripture
itself instead of simply giving them a speech, as true and as reflective
of biblical teaching as that speech may be. With expository preaching,
people become familiar with the Scripture. They can go back to the
passages that have been addressed, and they can be reminded by the text
itself of what it means. So you give people the Word of God in a way
that has long-term impact, because it makes them familiar with
Scripture.
Thirdly, it makes the authority unequivocal, and that authority is the
Scripture. That’s very clear no matter how powerful or gifted the
preacher might be. In consistent, expository preaching, the people
always know what the authority is. It’s not about homiletics. It’s not
about personal viewpoints and insights. It’s about relentlessly
affirming the true authority of Scripture, which is the most critical
thing that anybody can ever learn. It isn’t about, “Wasn’t that a great
sermon?” It isn’t about, “Wasn’t that a great outline? Wasn’t that
clever?” It’s always about, “What did the Word of God say?” And that
makes it truly authoritative, because the Word is from God. No other
preaching paradigm does this.
What are the unique challenges or difficulties of preaching to a
postmodern culture?
First of all, you have to understand that when you talk about a
postmodern culture, that’s an academic assessment of the culture. The
average Joe doesn’t have any idea what that means. All he knows is he’s
pretty much free to think and do whatever he wants. That’s how
postmodernism filters down to the guy in the pew. It’s not a
philosophy—it’s a lifestyle. The average guy just knows that the culture
doesn’t care what he does. The movies he sees don’t make a moral
judgment on anything except racism or somebody’s intolerance. So he’s
free to do whatever he wants in the society, and nobody can tell him
what to be or what to do, and the bottom line is that he should feel
good about himself. That’s what filters down.
But all this goes completely against the grain of his conscience and his
reason, and ultimately what he knows to be true. The unbeliever’s
conscience is a reality, and even reason tells him that there have to be
some absolutes.
The bottom line is that expository preaching confronts the amorality of
postmodernism with an authoritative message of absolute truth. It’s not
a question of debating. It’s not a question of trying to find some way
to sneak that in. It’s an issue of confronting this kind of thinking
with the absolute authority of Scripture and then letting the Spirit of
God make the application to the heart.
What are the advantages of expository preaching in a postmodern
culture?
Expository preaching is the only thing that is going to change anything.
There isn’t any other way to affect people positively aside from hitting
them with that kind of authority. In my own preaching, my objective is
not to court the postmodern mind. My objective is to confront it—to hit
it stone cold in the face with truth. It’s irrelevant to me how the
person thinks. It’s only relevant to me how they need to think. So I’m
not going to play around with their sensitivities to postmodernism.
At a recent Bible conference, I spoke on the exclusivity of the gospel,
and I set forth the distinctiveness of Christianity. And afterward some
guys who were seminary students and philosophy majors came up to me and
said, “What’s really interesting about your message is that you gave us
a philosophy of thinking, a worldview. But we’ve never heard anyone give
that kind of worldview without a very intricate philosophical defense.”
And I said I didn’t need to give an intricate philosophical defense,
because this is exactly what Scripture says, and there is no need to
defend it. You just proclaim it. See these guys were struck by the fact
that what they heard was an absolute authoritative statement of a
worldview that takes on postmodernism, without having to fuddle around
and make all kinds of philosophical and rational arguments, and without
having to answer every objection that arises.
So the advantages of preaching expositorily and authoritatively in a
postmodern culture are the same as they are in any environment where
there is error—you bring an authoritative word to bear upon how people
think.
In a lot of today’s literature on preaching, the idea exists that
preaching should impact culture and culture should shape the style of
preaching. How does that land with you?
I don’t think either of those things is true. I don’t think preaching is
going to impact culture—I think preaching is going to impact people. And
indirectly, if the Lord determines to save a mass of people, it’s going
to have some social impact on the country or the nation or the world.
You have the Great Awakening in America having some short-term—and maybe
even some long-term—cultural impact, but unbelievers are always going to
behave like unbelievers. The culture may be more or less influenced by
Christianity, but I don’t think the objective should be impacting
culture, if by that you mean anything less than conversion.
As far as the culture shaping preaching, I would say it shapes preaching
only in the sense that you address the issues. If you want to define
what’s wrong with a society, you need to know something about the
society. In different cultures there are different dominant sins or
kinds of behavior or belief systems that need to be addressed. If you
are preaching the gospel in a third-world country, for example, the
things that dominate their lives would be different than ours. They
might not include materialism and the kinds of things that are unique to
an affluent Western society. So when you’re talking about the sins of
the age or the dominant influences in the culture, they vary from place
to place, and it is helpful to know what they are. But that doesn’t say
anything about what style of preaching you use. That only says how you
enter into the dialogue with the culture.
Paul says, if I speak to Jews I speak a certain way, and if I speak to
Gentiles I speak a certain way. But that’s only at the point of entry.
That has nothing to say about the style. In other words, people today
are used to watching sitcoms on TV, but that doesn’t demand that you
preach in a narrative style. I would say you ought to avoid that style,
because people are so used to it. People are used to plays and theatrics
and movies, and so avoid all of that in your preaching, and your message
will come in a very unfamiliar package. There will be a starkness to it,
and it will be distinct and contrary to what they are used to hearing.
That’s one reason I prefer the expository and authoritative sermon—it’s
so contrary to what people are used to that it’s riveting and
compelling.
Apart from the gifting of God and His unique work through you, what
have been the keys to the effectiveness of your preaching ministry over
the years?
The first thing is interest. I think it’s interesting. I don’t know why
it’s interesting. I’ve tried to understand and assess that, but I really
don’t know. People are not going to come Sunday after Sunday, year after
year, and listen to me for an hour in the morning and another hour at
night if they’re not interested in what I’m saying. And that has nothing
to do with outlines or illustrations. Outlines serve a purpose and some
illustrations capture the moment, but over the long haul in order for
people to listen to expository preaching week-in week-out, there has to
be a compelling interest to it.
Some of it has to do with the element of surprise. Preachers who are
interesting say things that people don’t expect them to say. As a
preacher, you cannot simply say those things that are obvious to
everyone and expect to create interest. There must be an element of
surprise. It may not be that you’re introducing a surprising doctrine,
but you’re saying it in a captivating way.
If you’re boring in a personal conversation, you’re probably going to be
boring in a sermon. Some people are just interesting people—and
interesting to talk to—because they have interesting insights and an
interesting way to express things. Some of that is innate, but you can
also become interesting if you can get interesting material. So I think
the challenge is to be interesting, and the way to be more interesting
than you would normally be is to have interesting information. And that
demands that you be an extensive reader.
In addition to being interesting, a preacher must also be profound. And
when I talk about profound, I’m not talking about being thick and heavy
and obscure—I’m talking about being deep. In other words, there’s
something underneath the surface, something under the popular radar
that’s in the text and that you’re able to give to the people. You’re
able to go down into the passage and pull up the treasure that they—no
matter how many times they go over it on their own—are not going to get.
And it’s not just for the sake of interest—it comes with some weight,
because it deals with the question, “What is God really saying here?”
On the surface there are certain things that people can see, but by the
time I get done with a passage, there is a depth of understanding of
what God is communicating in the text that is surprising to them because
they couldn’t see it. And it’s weighty to them, because it brings the
force of truth to bear on their lives.
Another thing that makes preaching effective is creating the original
setting of the text so it becomes a living event. Whether it’s Paul
writing to a church or Jesus with the Pharisees, you want to bring your
people there, so that they are in the environment, living it and seeing
it unfold. And that means you have to do a lot of background and context
work—you’ve got to create the context as a living context.
Rather than trying to take the Bible and bring it into the modern day, I
try to take the modern day and bring it back to the Bible. And that’s a
distinction you want to make. This stuff about culture shaping preaching
is taking the Bible and redefining it in modern terms. My goal is to
take modern culture and the people of that culture and redefine them in
biblical terms so that they are living back in the Scriptures.
Along with living a life of integrity and being prayerful and dependent
on the Lord, those are the keys to effective preaching.
[The following is a
list of recommended books on expository preaching.] |
Preparing for the
Pulpit
Expository preaching is hard work. Given the amount of time
and effort that a pastor must spend studying and preparing to proclaim God’s
Word, an investment in books on preaching is a worthy one. The following are
those most highly recommended by the pastors on staff at Grace Community Church.
- John MacArthur and The Master’s Seminary Faculty,
Rediscovering Expository Preaching. Dallas: Word Publishing, 1992.
- Jerry Vines and Jim Shaddix,
Power in the Pulpit: How to Prepare and Deliver Expository Sermons.
Chicago: Moody Press, 1999.
- D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones,
Preaching and Preachers. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House,
1972.
- R. L. Dabney,
Evangelical Eloquence: A Course of Lectures on Preaching. Carlisle,
Penn.: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1999.
- John Piper,
The Supremacy of God in Preaching. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House,
1990.
- Samuel T. Logan, ed.,
The Preacher and Preaching. Phillipsburg, N. J.: Presbyterian &
Reformed Publishing, 1986.
- Jay E. Adams,
Preaching with Purpose: The Urgent Task of Homiletics. Grand Rapids:
Zondervan, 1982.
- John R. W. Stott,
Between Two Worlds: The Art of Preaching in the Twentieth Century.
Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1982.
- Alex Montoya,
Preaching with Passion. Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 2000.
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