expository preaching

Expository preaching—properly understood and practiced—is our calling.



Gentle reader,

Before I go further, please don’t miss the phrase, “expository preaching—properly understood and practiced.” Much of what goes by the name “expository preaching” amounts to little more than a running commentary on the ancient biblical text (“Last Sunday we got through chapter 7, verse 12. Today we begin with verse 13…”). Information without relevance. Knowledge without application. No central idea. If this is expository preaching at all, it is bastardized expository preaching! As taught and modeled by Haddon Robinson, expository preaching is as crisp and relevant as the Bible itself. An expository sermon can take many forms—inductive, deductive, narrative, and yes, even topical. So what makes an expository sermon expository? An expository preacher never brings his sermon idea to the text. He draws his sermon idea from the text. In other words, an expository preacher never imposes a topic on the text. He lets the text speak for itself and shapes his sermon accordingly.