(upbeat music) - Welcome back on this Monday. Today we have a wonderful ministry question on preaching right in your wheelhouse, Pastor John. Young pastor writes in to ask you this, quote, "Hello, Pastor John, thank you for this podcast. "I listen every time a new episode is released, "and I'm thankful for the impact "that your biblical insights have made on my life.

"My question for you is about expository preaching "and its place in student ministry. "I am the student pastor at my church. "Responsible for sixth through 12th grade ministry. "Whenever we gather for our youth worship time "on Wednesday nights, I typically preach "through books of the Bible in an expositional way.

"I try my best to apply the text to them "in ways that they can understand. "However, I sometimes question whether I should "preach expository sermons to the students "because I don't believe it's a common practice "in youth ministries. "I love God's word and want my students "to come to love God's word as well, "but should I teach to my students "in a way that is more application focused?

"I would appreciate your thoughts on this. "Thank you." - Well, I have endless thoughts about preaching. (both laughing) - Yes. - I could just go on and on and on. I love preaching. I believe God has appointed preaching to be part of the gathered worship of His church on the Lord's day especially, and I think all of it, all the time, should be based on and saturated with scripture.

That's what preaching is. It is a God-ordained way of saving sinners and sustaining and growing saints. I think it's relevant for old people, middle-aged people, young people, children. So I'm thrilled that our young pastor friend is in a church and leading a youth group where he is doing exposition.

So here are my, I originally had in my head a whole lot of thoughts, but I boiled it down to three. So here are my three thoughts I can squeeze into our few minutes together. Number one, as you unfold the meaning of particular biblical texts, be sure to stress what I call the reality factor.

Now, you don't need to use that phrase. That's my phrase, but here's what I mean. Some years ago, it hit me when I realized that it is possible to do a great deal of explaining how the thought of the text actually flows and how the words and clauses relate to each other without actually dealing with the reality of what the words are trying to communicate.

It just clobbered me that we can do this. We can stay at the surface of grammar and not get to reality. For example, in Philippians 2.12, it says, "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for God is the one who is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure." Now, suppose in your exposition, you point out to the students that the first clause is an imperative, command.

Work out your salvation. And the second clause is not a command, but an indicative, a statement of fact. God is at work in you, to will and to work. And then you draw attention to the connection between those two clauses with the word for, and you point out that the second clause, the statement, God is working, is the basis or the ground.

That's what for means, or the motive for the first clause, the command, work out your salvation. And maybe you even go further and you say, this is typical in the New Testament, that indicatives ground imperatives, and then you stop, end of exposition. Well, the problem is, stopping there, is that we haven't even touched the reality behind the clauses and their logical connection until we see how does this work in life?

Why does it work that I work out my salvation because Christ is at work in me, or God is at work in me? There's a vast difference between words and clauses on the one hand, and the realities they reveal on the other hand. And here you can see, this just blows people away when I pointed out, at least some people who have particular ideas about preaching, how artificial it is in the distinction between exposition and application.

Let me say that again, how artificial it is to distinguish between exposition and application, because we're not really doing exposition of the reality behind the words until we are dealing with real life, and telling how it works. What will it be like this afternoon? So the question is at 10 o'clock tonight, after these students are at home, having heard this exposition, they're at home now in their bedroom, with their computer, or with their family in the den, what will it look like for these students to work out their salvation?

What is that reality like? What will it feel like for them to experience the reality of God working in them? Do they have any sense at all what that it's talking about? What's the reality? How does it feel? How does it work? And how will they make the connection between those experiences of God working in them and their working?

We really don't know what this text means until we can explain not just the words, clauses, logic, grammar, but the realities tonight at 10 o'clock in the bedroom, in the kitchen, how it works in people's lives. That requires a huge effort on the part of the preacher, because he's now working at two levels, the level of words and grammar and logic, we call that the text, and the effort to explain how the parts of the text fit together.

And on the other level, what realities is this author with these words and this grammar and this logic? What realities is he trying to communicate to my mind and my heart and my hands? Language and reality, the two levels, and both are absolutely crucial. You can't do a shortcut around the grammar, around the logic, around the words, but if you stop there, you haven't done the kind of exposition needs to be done.

It is real head work. It is real heart work, but the payoff for the students will be huge. So that's my first suggestion. Deal with the reality factor, as well as the text factor. Your students will love it, because it will touch their lives, their reality. Number two, in your exposition through texts, take doctrinal depth tours, not doctrinal detours, but doctrinal depth tours.

Now, I just made that up. I have never in the history of the world said that before. This is my new term, and here's what I mean. I mean is that preaching that moves through texts without doctrinal depth tours, they're like detours, but they're depth tours, 'cause you're not going away from where you should go.

That's what a detour is. You go away and you wish you didn't have to go, but a depth tour, you wanna go on this road. So this will build doctrinally strong people. And without it, I just don't know how you can build doctrinally strong youth group, doctrinally strong people.

What I mean by that is people, youth group, who have a clear, deeply rooted understanding of really important biblical doctrines. Now, you can't do everything as a youth pastor. You're working in tandem with other groups and worship services and sermons and lessons and classes in your church and maybe even in the home and in the school.

But I mean doctrines like God's sovereignty, God's holiness, God's grace, God's justice, the deity and humanity of Christ, the deity and personhood of the Holy Spirit, the nature of sin, both as action and disease of the heart, the nature of redemption and propitiation and regeneration, calling, faith, justification, sanctification, walking by the Spirit, perseverance of the saints, the nature of the church, what happens when you die, the second coming, eternal life, new heavens and new earth.

If a young person studies texts of scripture without ever taking doctrinal depth tours, he's like a person who lines up all the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle but never puts them together to see the beauty of the picture that they make. But in fact, you can be pretty proud of putting those pieces in line.

It could look, my pieces are all lined up. They might even recite the entire first chapter of Ephesians by heart and never have paused to do a detour into the doctrine of election. But it's the totality of the big picture that holds person, isn't it? It's the picture that holds, takes hold of a 16-year-old and keeps them for 60 years, holds them for a lifetime.

Who God is, what he's doing, how did Christ save sinners? How does the Christian life work? Where's it all heading? Now, there are different ways to do this. You can do an expository series of messages through text and then do a doctrinal series separately. I'm not at all opposed to topical messages like that.

Like we're gonna do five weeks, kids, on election and predestination. And we're gonna do five weeks on sin and what it is, what kind of disease do you have in your heart and so on. I'm not at all opposed to those kinds of things because they're all expository, meaning if I'm gonna explain anything, it's gonna be exposition of the scripture is where my explanations come from.

Or you can take these doctrinal depth tours that I'm suggesting within the time of exposition. So 15 minutes, say, of your 30-minute message might be devoted to painting the big doctrinal reality behind one word in your text, like justification. It's not either or, you can mix it up in various ways.

I think students love to see how reality actually fits together, really fits together. And they love to see how texts actually work. So some combination of exposition of texts where they get their nose in the grammar and efforts to build their doctrinal knowledge, both of these are crucial. And then last thing I would say, number three, is if your students hear good preaching on Sunday morning, I would probably not try to turn the Wednesday evening teaching time into another sermon.

I would create a more interactive, Socratic method of teaching, probably. Now you know your situation better than I do, but this is what I would do if I were the youth minister and I had a good pastor who's doing real preaching on Sunday, I would probably not try to do the same thing on Wednesday, but train these students how to look at the text, look at the book, and how to ask really good thought questions because questions are the key to understanding.

Lots of times people hear me say a participatory or interactive and they think, "Oh, I've been in those kinds of groups. Everybody shares their ignorance." All what I mean, I mean, I teach like this generally. I stay in control. I'm asking the questions, right? And if students ask stupid questions, then you delicately and wisely, you guide them towards good questions.

You don't let everybody just share their ignorance. You know where you wanna take them and you take them there by training them to get there themselves. You're modeling how to pose really good questions about what you see in the text and getting them to look and think and speak and then correcting them so that they get better and better at reading their Bibles.

It is possible to do very serious exposition and doctrinal teaching this way. You can do this Socratically. And the key is really good questions, provocative questions. I mean, I've been in so many groups where they say, "Who said this?" And the students are looking at each other and saying, "That's the stupidest question.

It says, Peter said this. Why is he asking me that? That is such a stupid question. Who said this? Where are we in the text?" Those are not the kind of questions that get anybody excited about anything. They have to be thought questions, hard thinking questions, questions that really have to pay off in textual understanding and real life experience.

So those are my three suggestions for handling the Word with your youth group. Deal with the reality factor, take doctrinal depth tours, and ask provocative thought questions. And of course, a whole nother episode, soak it all in earnest prayer, because if God doesn't show up, then everything is in vain.

- Yeah, amen, sobering. God must act for anything we do to bear eternally lasting fruit. Thank you, Pastor John. And for churches that don't preach exegetically on Sunday mornings, if that's a concern, see an old episode that we recorded titled, "Is the 40-minute sermon passé?" Is the 40-minute sermon passé?

That was APJ 118, on why discussions in the Socratic method are out of place in the Sunday morning preaching context. Sermons are not just about learning. The first aim of preaching, he says in this episode, "The first aim of preaching is not education, but encounter with the living God." Excellent episode to check out on the purpose of preaching APJ 118 in the archive right now at askpastorjohn.com.

Thanks for joining us today. I am your host, Tony Reinke. We will see you back here on Thursday. Thanks for listening. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)