Geoffrey R. Kirkland
Christ Fellowship Bible Church
In what follows, I'll provide 16 benefits of expository preaching.
Expository preaching...
- Allows God to speak through His written Word, by His chosen mouthpiece, to all who are present.
- Defines the primary way that Christ promises to build His Church -- through the regular, faithful, steady, theological, Christ-centered, Spirit-empowered expounding of Scripture.
- Feeds God’s people on the whole counsel of God.
- Is the primary means that the Spirit of God brings lost sinners to salvation through faith alone in Christ alone.
- Is the primary means through which the Spirit of God sanctifies, grows, convicts, and conforms the likeness of Christ in true believers.
- Upholds the absolute sufficiency, divine authority, unstoppable power, and glorious comforts found in Holy Scripture.
- Brings out the authorial meaning of the text that is singular, unchanging and expounded.
- Models for believers how to study God’s Word and how to derive at the meaning of the text and proper application of the meaning of that text for their lives today.
- Aids the congregation to know what will be preached on next week (if it’s sequential exposition through a Book of the Bible).
- Prevents a minister from saying his opinions, or reading into the text what’s not there (eisegesis), or entertaining people with stories.
- Grows the preacher himself as he studies the text of Scripture to be preached and benefits from the sanctifying work of God’s truth in his own soul and life.
- Goes forth with the power of the Holy Spirit with much prayer and faithful proclamation.
- Must be priority and central in the local church.
- Informs the minds of believers with theological truth so as to see how the text that is preached fits within the immediate and greater context of that chapter and book. It shows the flock that God’s Word is a unity and that systematic theology is to be derived out of Scripture as it is properly interpreted.
- Does not change with the cultural changes, preferences of men, laws of the land, or generational shifts. It is a timeless mandate from God.
- Allows the sermon to be preached in any culture in the world as the meaning of the text does not change from place to place (applications may differ but the meaning remains constant).
