An Excellent Example of Theological Expository Preaching
Yes! You can preach on the Trinity, the two natures of Christ, and Jesus' Joy of Unconditional Election and Predestination!
Last Sunday, I was eager to come back to gather with my church family after missing the previous Sunday due to sickness. I came through the doors of the school building where we met looking forward to catching up with fellow church members, singing deeply biblical songs of praise, and receiving the preaching of the written Word of God. But when my pastor got up to preach, I was not expecting this kind of sermon.
This was a sermon that I will remember for a very long time. In short, it was a timely, memorable sermon.
Don’t get me wrong. My favorite preacher is first and foremost my local church pastor. I love the preaching of John Piper, Matt Chandler, and others, but my pastor is my favorite preacher because he is my local church pastor who shepherds not just me but the rest of my local church. Ever since I’ve been a member, I’ve experienced the same kind of faithful preaching that I’ve gotten from my previous home churches, and I know this because I’ve talked with him throughout the years about preaching, teaching, and discipleship. He aims to simply present the given text of Scripture, rightly handle it, and then apply it to our lives.
This sermon was another faithful exposition of the passage (Luke 10:21-22), but what made it stand out to me more than previous sermons was how blatantly theological it was. No, my pastor wasn’t reading straight from a textbook, but he preached in such a way that deep theology was woven throughout his sermon like an artist painting a beautiful masterpiece with fitting colors.
Please watch the sermon right below, but I want to highlight how he spent time from this passage unpacking the following:
The Trinity (Three Divine Persons)
The One Nature of God
The Shared Joy (and Divine Nature) of the Trinity
The Two Natures of Christ/Hypostatic Union
Jesus’ Joy in God’s Sovereign Grace (Election and Predestination)
How Election and Predestination Fuels Evangelism
Friends, I think this past sermon was a masterclass on how pastors ought to preach expositionally with a theological awareness of the text. Furthermore, pastors must not shy away from preaching the deep things of God when it comes to theology, especially what we would deem “hard”, “scary”, or “too controversial.” Back in 2008 at the second Together for the Gospel conference, Ligon Duncan gave a talk entitled “Sound Doctrine Essential to Faithful Pastoral Ministry.” He states as one of his main points, “I want to show you from Scripture that Systematic Theology is necessary, important, and, in fact, unavoidable.” Later he states that pastors do theology all the time both in the pulpit and outside the pulpit.
Here is also the follow-up panel discussion regarding Systematic Theology in preaching and pastoral ministry.
So whether or not you are a pastor, theology not only matters but is unavoidable if you or your church’s pastor seeks to preach the whole counsel of God’s Word. Sadly, can we really say that most pastors in the United States have this kind of awareness? Is there even regular expository preaching—“preaching in which the main point of the biblical text being considered becomes the main point of the sermon being preached”1—to begin with in many pulpits where pastors have to deal with the theology from the text? I pray that more preaching like this will increase not only here in my home of South Florida but also throughout the United States and worldwide.
So brother pastors, preach the word (2 Tim. 4:2), and as you do so teach what accords with sound doctrine (Tit. 2:1). May theologically expository preaching no longer be the exception but the increasing norm of Evangelical preaching.
Mark Dever and Greg Gilbert, Preach: Theology Meets Practice (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2012), 36.