“Sound Bible exposition is an imperative must in the Church of the Living God. Without it no church can be a New Testament church in any strict meaning of that term. But exposition may be carried on in such a way as to leave the hearers devoid of any true spiritual nourishment whatever. For it is not mere words that nourish the soul, but God Himself, and unless and until the hearers find God in personal experience they are not the better for having heard the truth. The Bible is not an end in itself, but a means to bring men to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God, that they may enter into Him, that they may delight in His Presence, may taste and know the inner sweetness of the very God Himself in the core and center of their hearts.” (A.W. Tozer)
The last blog covered how exposition of Scripture in many ways is starving people in the churches. People are being faithful to the text in the sense that they are just talking about the text. They are being faithful to the text in the sense that they are giving a running commentary on the text. But they never arrive at what is needed to nourish the souls of the people that are hungering for God. In this blog I want to discuss how exposition is to feed the souls of the saints who hunger for the things of God.
Clearly just taking a chair and reading a commentary on a text is not sufficient to feed the soul. That is about all that some sermons that are expositions of the text do. So how is one to go beyond that? As Tozer says, “it is not mere words that nourish the soul, but God Himself.” So expositions that are using mere words and stop with mere words are not nourishing souls. However, the expositions of Scripture that nourish souls are those that feed the soul with God Himself. At this point, however, we must proceed with caution. One can speak of God in a way that is just mere words as well. But for the moment, what we want to assert is that preaching is to feed people with God Himself. So to do that one must always be looking at the character of God that is in the passage or that underlies the passage. The Bible is a revelation of God and its intent is to show forth the glory of God. An exposition of Scripture that does not do that is simply missing the main point of the text no matter how faithful the preacher is to the text in other ways.
To feed souls in preaching is to set forth the glory of God in the face of Christ in preaching. It is not necessarily the case that each sermon must focus on this entirely, but that the point of the sermon is built on this and it must show how it is so. Sin must be addressed as against God and its hideousness is only seen in light of His holiness. Self-denial is not a virtue as such, but one must deny self in order to live for the glory of God. Repentance is not just a turning from outward acts that violate the Ten Commandments, but it is a turning from living for self in order to live for the glory of God. All texts of Scripture should in some way point to the glory of God as its goal. This would be preaching that has God’s glory for its goal and it is that type of preaching that feeds and nourishes the souls of hungry believers.
But we must get back to the “mere words” part. The believer must come into a living experience with God in order for the truth preached to obtain its goal. Preaching is not just mere words, though it is the use of words, but the intent is to have the hearers meet with God and not just hear. In this sense the sermon must strive to have hearers see that they need to go to God and not just hear words. The human being has been made in the image of God and it is only when the soul of that human meets God that it can be satisfied. God alone can satisfy the soul. God alone can move the soul to become more and more like Himself which is spiritual growth. God alone can give Himself to a soul during preaching or any other time. As II Corinthians 3:18 sets out, the true growth of the believer is in beholding the glory of the Lord. It is in beholding that glory that the believer is transformed from one degree of glory to another. That is spiritual growth. This points to the real need of preaching which is to set forth the glory of God in the text and strive to move people to see and taste of that glory.
A mere exposition of a text with words alone will never feed hungry souls since the soul is hungry for God. Preachers need to repent of their running commentaries that are nothing but man-centered and word-centered expositions of the Scripture and get back to exalting God in their sermons. Let us forget trying to be respectable and scholarly and get back to preaching that exalts God and feeds the souls of people that must see His glory in order to be converted and to spiritually grow. After all, preaching should be a supernatural thing and not just something that is confined to the earthly level. Let us enter into the supernatural with our preaching.
God Loves... Himself 
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