Expositional Listening
08. Oct, 2008 
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This mark of a healthy member gets me excited on many levels. To be honest with you, when I first began my weekly pulpit preaching ministry I was intimidated and down right scared, and over a year later I still get nervous before delivering a sermon. But what has helped me to get over the nervousness and also part of the reason why I’ve fallen in love with the actual act of preaching is seeing the fruit of it. And yes, I’m sure there is some pride here, but there is little that encourages me more than to hear how the Word of God is working in your lives. Expressing your questions, struggles, and victories that have come from a sermon is so encouraging to me. It keeps me diligent in study and in improving my own expositional preaching skills. It keeps me excited to see how God is going to work in His Word.
I never sit down to study for a sermon and begin with a point I want to make. I study to the best of my ability using the tools in which I’ve been trained to use to find the point of the text. I try to start with absolutely no assumptions and then allow the biblical sciences and spirit of God to direct the path to understanding the main point. I then try to work off that point to make it as understandable to a listener as possible. I still have much to learn here.
What I’ve found so amazing is how God’s Word speaks to so many situations. Usually when I prepare a sermon I’m dealing with the things in my own life, I try not to let it take over a sermon but it’s impossible to completely remove myself from the text. But what’s cool is that while a text speaks to me one way, and then when I deliver the sermon and I hear of how God is speaking a certain way in another person’s life, it illustrates to me how divine His Word really is. He can use the truth of His Word to speak to many different people in many different areas. You just don’t get that with topical sermons or what I call “point of reference sermons.” The text of the Word transcends topics and personal agendas.
I am convinced that there is really only one kind of preaching, expositional preaching; why we have to qualify preaching as expositional is due to the fact that so few preachers actually preach. I’ve heard many great orators and motivators, some who say some true things and helpful things, but none of that makes one a true biblical preacher. The Word of God is not to be used as a reference for our personal agenda; it is our agenda. And as a body of Christ, we must make this Word central to our lives, practically. When we hear the promises of God, the doctrines of His Word, we don’t just bank it in the brain, we search out until it becomes relevant for our lives. Expositional preaching takes many unfair shots from those who accuse such a “method” as irrelevant, but I beg to differ, the problem isn’t that the Word of God is not relevant for today’s modern people, the problem is that modern people, sinners, hate God and God haters hate truth and don’t want to deal with it. Which is really nothing new. We must discipline ourselves to listen, it is not natural in man to desire the Word, and redeemed man must cultivate it and fight against all flesh.
Do we need to preach in context? Absolutely, we must continually find the best way to communicate unchanging truth, but never should the context drive the content. In other word, the Word of God is not to be changed as to no longer contain the truth. Contextualization has a place but there is far too much heresy and weak preaching in the name of contextualization. Sometimes when I listen to sermons it appears that the preacher took more time coming up with a title than He did in studying the Word.
When we neglect expositional preaching or don’t cultivate the discipline of listening to it, we damage the body and ourselves. Many ills within the church can be linked to the lack of expositional preaching and expositional listening.
But when we do cultivate expositional preaching and listening we get our priorities more in line to God’s. As this chapter has shown, expositional listening is a defining mark of a healthy church member, and really we can’t hope to exemplify the other nine without first having this one.
