Expository Preaching: The Most Urgent Need in the World

There is a quote I came across in Martyn Lloyd-Jones’s Preaching and Preachers that has stayed with me ever since I first read it years ago. It is somewhat famous, or even notorious, depending on what circles you run in. The quote is as follows:

The most urgent need in the Christian Church is true preaching; and as it is the greatest and the most urgent need in the Church, it is obviously the greatest need in the world also.

Of course, what seemed obvious to Lloyd-Jones is hotly debated and even denied by others. Is true preaching the most urgent need in the Church? And is, therefore, true preaching the greatest need in “the world also”? 

True Preaching

We should say something here about what Lloyd-Jones meant by “true preaching.” For Lloyd-Jones, true preaching consisted of two main ingredients: 1) the message of the sermon flowed from the biblical text, and 2) the message was then delivered in the ‘unction of the Holy Spirit.’ He called it “logic on fire.” He says elsewhere in Preaching and Preachers:

What is preaching? Logic on fire! Eloquent reasons! Are these contradictions? Of course they are not. Reason concerning this TRUTH ought to be mightily eloquent, as you see it in the case of the Apostle Paul and others. It is theology on fire and a theology which does not take fire, I maintain is a defective theology; or at least the man’s understanding of it is defective. Preaching is theology coming through a man who is on fire. A true understanding and experience of the Truth must lead to this. I say again that a man who can speak about these things dispassionately has no right whatsoever to be in a pulpit; and should never be allowed to enter one.

It must be said that this type of preaching is desperately lacking in today’s church. Too many pastors are content to use the text as a springboard to their devotional platitudes and litany of stories rather than actually interpreting and expounding the biblical text. All the while not realizing that the spiritual power is actually in the text itself, not in their personality (Heb 4:12). On the other side, many who claim to do ‘expository preaching’ preach messages, which essentially amount to running exegetical commentaries, which lack exhortations, applications, and what old preachers called the “unction of the Holy Spirit.”

It is true expository preaching which exercises and reinvigorates churches. God uses this type of preaching to fan the flame of reformation and revival. It is this type of preaching which wins lost souls to Christ. And it is this type of preaching which is desperately needed today. I pray that the young generations discover it! 

A Famine in the Land

Years ago, Steven Lawson wrote a book called Famine in the Land in which he used Amos 8:11 to describe modern Christianity’s situation. Amos wrote:

[11] “Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord GOD, “when I will send a famine on the land—not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD.

Lawson’s thesis is that one of the evidences of God’s judgment on modern Christianity is the lack of Expository Preaching—that you can attend churches, far and wide, and not find a church where the truth is simply expounded upon and exhorted. The famine is not a famine of food but of the Word of God. The Word of God has functionally been lost in the land of the Bible Belt and Contemporary Christian Music (CCM). Even those within the church are mainly ignorant of the contents of the Bible!

H. B. Charles, Jr.

Yesterday, I attended H. B. Charles Jr’s Cutting it Straight seminar at Shiloh Metropolitan Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Florida, focused on expository preaching. Similar to Lawson, Charles made what I found to be a fascinating statement regarding expository preaching. He said, “Today we are in an out-of-season period for expository preaching,” referencing 2 Tim 4:2. he asserted that expository preaching has fallen out of vogue in the Christian world. It has become a lost medium in a world of podcasts and even long movies. This is true “across the board,” Charles argued, “in all types of churches.” I couldn’t help but agree. Everywhere you look, finding faithful expository ministries is becoming harder and harder. And therefore, it is harder and harder to find Christians with even a modicum of biblical discernment.

Why We Must Recover Expository Preaching

Charles made another comment that floored me, “Expository preaching is not so much a style of preaching as it is a view of Scripture itself,” he said. In other words, because Scripture is the “breathed-out” Word of God, it demanded to be read and explained in terms of its God-designed intent (2 Tim 3:16, 17). Charles pointed out that this is where true spiritual authority is derived—not from the preacher's personality but from the fact that God spoke the words being preached.

This gets to the heart of why expository preaching is so crucial for the church today and the world. True expository preaching ultimately introduces its hearers to God. When the Bible is proclaimed in the power of the Holy Spirit, the hearers suddenly find that it is no longer the preacher they are dealing with but God Himself. The Holy Spirit comes in conviction (John 16:8), and He testifies to the truth in the conscience (John 14:17; 16:13-15). 

This is what made Edwards, Whitefield, and Spurgeon such effective preachers. It was the “God factor.” People simply encountered God when they preached. Sadly, today, the gauge of a sermon is often the entertainment value. Does the preacher keep my attention? Lloyd-Jones, on the other hand, knew better. In his later years, when listening to a lot of preaching, he once said, “I can forgive a preacher almost anything if he gives me a sense of God.” That’s the end game of true preaching! That is what changes the person and changes the world. It is the encounter with the living God.