Pastor, author underscores the importance of expository preaching

Correctly explaining God’s Word is the most important thing pastors can do for their churches, well-known pastor and author John MacArthur said during a three–day lecture series at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C.
   
MacArthur, whose messages focused on why ignoring God’s Word is so destructive to God’s people, is pastor of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, Calif., where he has served for 34 years, and president of the Master’s College and Seminary in Santa Clarita, Calif.
   
He also is a conference speaker and featured teacher on the “Grace to You” radio ministry, which airs more than 1,500 times daily around the world.
   
Underscoring the importance of biblical exposition, MacArthur went on to list 15 unintended consequences a pastor who fails to base his messages on God’s Word will inevitably face.
Bible based
   
“I think Christian ministry, as such, has one clear duty — and that is to bring people the truth of God by explaining the meaning of the Bible,” MacArthur said during his Sept. 2–4 visit to Southeastern. “You have an obligation to God to get it right.”
   
Throughout his messages, MacArthur took a stance against the modern seeker–friendly movement, which he said is often guilty of exchanging biblical exposition for cleverly crafted yet shallow messages. These messages omit potentially offending truths and conform themselves in order to resemble a lost world.
   
MacArthur noted that this kind of failure to exposit the Word usurps the Lordship of Christ over His church and hinders the work of the Holy Spirit.
   
“At the beginning is the question of authority,” MacArthur said. “Who is sovereign? Who has the right to be heard? I have no authority in my church unless I say, ‘Thus says the Lord.’ I’m there to be the voice of God, nothing less.”
   
“Your ideas will come and go and be forgotten,” he continued. “But [God’s Word] will not go. People do not grow because of insightful stories or clever analogies. The Word of God is the only true source of help. [It] alone cuts deep and then heals,” MacArthur said.
   
MacArthur added that preaching should not reflect a pastor’s own ideas and intuition but, instead, the mind of Christ.
   
He also was adamant that the church should not be influenced by the world or take its cues from culture.
   
MacArthur said that the church should be a reflection of heaven. He said it is a travesty for the pastor to allow sinful people to feel confortable in church.
   
“I’m not trying to make the church as much like the world as I can,” MacArthur said. “I’m trying to make the church as much like heaven as I can. People should walk into church, and it should be nothing like the world.”
   
MacArthur encouraged students that by expositing the Word, they could protect their churches from error and defend their flock from  those who marginalize the gospel and preach “feel–good” theology. “The enemy wants to come into the church and attack the truth,” he exhorted. “We have a responsibility to protect the sheep. We need to be ‘warrior preachers.’” (BP)