Expository Preaching in a Postmodern World

by Dr. John F. MacArthur, Jr.


A doctoral student recently interviewed John MacArthur for a dissertation about preaching in a postmodern world. The following is a transcript of that interview.

Over the course of your ministry, why have you remained committed to expository preaching over other preaching paradigms?

Well first, because it is a biblical mandate. It doesn’t fluctuate with culture, with expectations, with times or seasons. Expository preaching is the best way to preach the Bible. If every word of God is pure, if every word of God is true, then every word needs to be dealt with. And expository preaching is only way you actually come to grips with every word in the Scriptures.

Secondly, expository preaching familiarizes people with the Scripture itself instead of simply giving them a speech, as true and as reflective of biblical teaching as that speech may be. With expository preaching, people become familiar with the Scripture. They can go back to the passages that have been addressed, and they can be reminded by the text itself of what it means. So you give people the Word of God in a way that has long-term impact, because it makes them familiar with Scripture.

Thirdly, it makes the authority unequivocal, and that authority is the Scripture. That’s very clear no matter how powerful or gifted the preacher might be. In consistent, expository preaching, the people always know what the authority is. It’s not about homiletics. It’s not about personal viewpoints and insights. It’s about relentlessly affirming the true authority of Scripture, which is the most critical thing that anybody can ever learn. It isn’t about, “Wasn’t that a great sermon?” It isn’t about, “Wasn’t that a great outline? Wasn’t that clever?” It’s always about, “What did the Word of God say?” And that makes it truly authoritative, because the Word is from God. No other preaching paradigm does this.

What are the unique challenges or difficulties of preaching to a postmodern culture?

First of all, you have to understand that when you talk about a postmodern culture, that’s an academic assessment of the culture. The average Joe doesn’t have any idea what that means. All he knows is he’s pretty much free to think and do whatever he wants. That’s how postmodernism filters down to the guy in the pew. It’s not a philosophy—it’s a lifestyle. The average guy just knows that the culture doesn’t care what he does. The movies he sees don’t make a moral judgment on anything except racism or somebody’s intolerance. So he’s free to do whatever he wants in the society, and nobody can tell him what to be or what to do, and the bottom line is that he should feel good about himself. That’s what filters down.

But all this goes completely against the grain of his conscience and his reason, and ultimately what he knows to be true. The unbeliever’s conscience is a reality, and even reason tells him that there have to be some absolutes.

The bottom line is that expository preaching confronts the amorality of postmodernism with an authoritative message of absolute truth. It’s not a question of debating. It’s not a question of trying to find some way to sneak that in. It’s an issue of confronting this kind of thinking with the absolute authority of Scripture and then letting the Spirit of God make the application to the heart.

What are the advantages of expository preaching in a postmodern culture?

Expository preaching is the only thing that is going to change anything. There isn’t any other way to affect people positively aside from hitting them with that kind of authority. In my own preaching, my objective is not to court the postmodern mind. My objective is to confront it—to hit it stone cold in the face with truth. It’s irrelevant to me how the person thinks. It’s only relevant to me how they need to think. So I’m not going to play around with their sensitivities to postmodernism.

At a recent Bible conference, I spoke on the exclusivity of the gospel, and I set forth the distinctiveness of Christianity. And afterward some guys who were seminary students and philosophy majors came up to me and said, “What’s really interesting about your message is that you gave us a philosophy of thinking, a worldview. But we’ve never heard anyone give that kind of worldview without a very intricate philosophical defense.” And I said I didn’t need to give an intricate philosophical defense, because this is exactly what Scripture says, and there is no need to defend it. You just proclaim it. See these guys were struck by the fact that what they heard was an absolute authoritative statement of a worldview that takes on postmodernism, without having to fuddle around and make all kinds of philosophical and rational arguments, and without having to answer every objection that arises.

So the advantages of preaching expositorily and authoritatively in a postmodern culture are the same as they are in any environment where there is error—you bring an authoritative word to bear upon how people think.

In a lot of today’s literature on preaching, the idea exists that preaching should impact culture and culture should shape the style of preaching. How does that land with you?

I don’t think either of those things is true. I don’t think preaching is going to impact culture—I think preaching is going to impact people. And indirectly, if the Lord determines to save a mass of people, it’s going to have some social impact on the country or the nation or the world. You have the Great Awakening in America having some short-term—and maybe even some long-term—cultural impact, but unbelievers are always going to behave like unbelievers. The culture may be more or less influenced by Christianity, but I don’t think the objective should be impacting culture, if by that you mean anything less than conversion.

As far as the culture shaping preaching, I would say it shapes preaching only in the sense that you address the issues. If you want to define what’s wrong with a society, you need to know something about the society. In different cultures there are different dominant sins or kinds of behavior or belief systems that need to be addressed. If you are preaching the gospel in a third-world country, for example, the things that dominate their lives would be different than ours. They might not include materialism and the kinds of things that are unique to an affluent Western society. So when you’re talking about the sins of the age or the dominant influences in the culture, they vary from place to place, and it is helpful to know what they are. But that doesn’t say anything about what style of preaching you use. That only says how you enter into the dialogue with the culture.

Paul says, if I speak to Jews I speak a certain way, and if I speak to Gentiles I speak a certain way. But that’s only at the point of entry. That has nothing to say about the style. In other words, people today are used to watching sitcoms on TV, but that doesn’t demand that you preach in a narrative style. I would say you ought to avoid that style, because people are so used to it. People are used to plays and theatrics and movies, and so avoid all of that in your preaching, and your message will come in a very unfamiliar package. There will be a starkness to it, and it will be distinct and contrary to what they are used to hearing. That’s one reason I prefer the expository and authoritative sermon—it’s so contrary to what people are used to that it’s riveting and compelling.

Apart from the gifting of God and His unique work through you, what have been the keys to the effectiveness of your preaching ministry over the years?

The first thing is interest. I think it’s interesting. I don’t know why it’s interesting. I’ve tried to understand and assess that, but I really don’t know. People are not going to come Sunday after Sunday, year after year, and listen to me for an hour in the morning and another hour at night if they’re not interested in what I’m saying. And that has nothing to do with outlines or illustrations. Outlines serve a purpose and some illustrations capture the moment, but over the long haul in order for people to listen to expository preaching week-in week-out, there has to be a compelling interest to it.

Some of it has to do with the element of surprise. Preachers who are interesting say things that people don’t expect them to say. As a preacher, you cannot simply say those things that are obvious to everyone and expect to create interest. There must be an element of surprise. It may not be that you’re introducing a surprising doctrine, but you’re saying it in a captivating way.

If you’re boring in a personal conversation, you’re probably going to be boring in a sermon. Some people are just interesting people—and interesting to talk to—because they have interesting insights and an interesting way to express things. Some of that is innate, but you can also become interesting if you can get interesting material. So I think the challenge is to be interesting, and the way to be more interesting than you would normally be is to have interesting information. And that demands that you be an extensive reader.

In addition to being interesting, a preacher must also be profound. And when I talk about profound, I’m not talking about being thick and heavy and obscure—I’m talking about being deep. In other words, there’s something underneath the surface, something under the popular radar that’s in the text and that you’re able to give to the people. You’re able to go down into the passage and pull up the treasure that they—no matter how many times they go over it on their own—are not going to get. And it’s not just for the sake of interest—it comes with some weight, because it deals with the question, “What is God really saying here?”

On the surface there are certain things that people can see, but by the time I get done with a passage, there is a depth of understanding of what God is communicating in the text that is surprising to them because they couldn’t see it. And it’s weighty to them, because it brings the force of truth to bear on their lives.

Another thing that makes preaching effective is creating the original setting of the text so it becomes a living event. Whether it’s Paul writing to a church or Jesus with the Pharisees, you want to bring your people there, so that they are in the environment, living it and seeing it unfold. And that means you have to do a lot of background and context work—you’ve got to create the context as a living context.

Rather than trying to take the Bible and bring it into the modern day, I try to take the modern day and bring it back to the Bible. And that’s a distinction you want to make. This stuff about culture shaping preaching is taking the Bible and redefining it in modern terms. My goal is to take modern culture and the people of that culture and redefine them in biblical terms so that they are living back in the Scriptures.

Along with living a life of integrity and being prayerful and dependent on the Lord, those are the keys to effective preaching.