By Matthew Honeycutt
Preaching is an age old art form. It is an historic art form that employs public speaking to engage, motivate, and teach (disciple) an audience with words, God’s words to be precise.
Preaching is just one of the means God has instructed His followers to declare or proclaim the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Preaching is not just to listen to a motivational speech. It is a time when God’s people are taught or reminded about God’s commands, expectations, and promises. As Haddon Robinson muses, preaching is “the event through which God works.”[1] And, this is all done together as community with God’s word as the centerpiece in order to change lives. This is discipleship.
The word discipleship is closely related to discipline. Our first thought about discipline perhaps is a negative one. We usually associate discipline with punishment for a wrong doing. However, in a community setting, such as the local church, discipline is discipleship. Discipleship is how we pass on to others what we have learned from the Scriptures. And this takes discipline.
How effectively we disciple others in preaching hinges on two important characteristics: content and purpose.
The Content of Preaching as Discipleship
The content of preaching is of high importance and is tantamount for discipleship to be effective. This is why there is much emphasis placed on the Scriptures as the primary source of content in a message. After all, it is God’s words and not human opinions that make preaching efficacious. As the Apostle Paul relayed in his letter to his protégé Timothy, “Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; correct, rebuke, and encourage with great patience and teaching.” (2 Timothy 4:2, CSB) “Preach the word,” Paul told Timothy. Paul realized the importance and centrality of the Scriptures as the only substance by which God’s people can be properly and effectively discipled.
Digging a little deeper, the Hebrews writer had this to say about the effective nature of the Scriptures, “For the word of God is living and effective and sharper than any double-edged sword, penetrating as far as the separation of soul and spirit, joints and marrow. It is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:12, CSB) No human opinion can accomplish this task. Only God’s words can accomplish the task of penetrating the deepest recesses of the human heart.
This is why expository preaching is held in high regard as the preferred way of teaching and preaching God’s holy word. Expository preaching uses the message of the text and makes it the message of the sermon. Or, as 9Marks puts it, an expository sermon “takes the main point of a passage of Scripture, makes it the main point of the sermon, and applies it to life today. In other words, an expositional sermon exposes the meaning of a passage of Scripture and shows its relevance to the lives of one’s hearers.”[2]
The content in a sermon must be God’s words or discipleship will not take place. But it is not solely content that changes lives. It is discerning what God’s purpose behind preaching is what fine tunes our messages.
The Purpose of Preaching as Discipleship
The purpose of preaching as discipleship can be narrowed down to three aspects: changed lives, equipping the church for ministry, and promoting spiritual growth. Life change is the first aspect of discipleship that is instilled through preaching God’s word. Without life change first and foremost, there is no subsequent equipping and no spiritual growth. Only when one comes to know Jesus through the faithful ministry of the word will the other purposes follow.
Once conversion occurs discipleship continues through preaching a regular diet of God’s word to promote spiritual growth and to equip the church for ministry. As Paul the Apostle made clear to the Ephesian church, “And he himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers,to equip the saints for the work of ministry, to build up the body of Christ,until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of God’s Son, growing into maturity with a stature measured by Christ’s fullness.Then we will no longer be little children, tossed by the waves and blown around by every wind of teaching, by human cunning with cleverness in the techniques of deceit.But speaking the truth in love, let us grow in every way into him who is the head—Christ.” (Ephesians 4:11-15, CSB) It is pastors who primarily disciple God’s people on a weekly basis through preaching and teaching the Scriptures that accomplishes these tasks.
Preaching God’s word is a form of discipleship as God’s commands, expectations, and promises are proclaimed before God’s people. This is to enable life change, spiritual growth, and edification of the church body. Without the Holy Scriptures as the content of our discourses effective discipleship will not take place. This is why a commitment to preach God’s word as a form of discipleship is needed still today.
[1] Haddon W. Robinson, Biblical Preaching: The Development and Delivery of Expository Messages, Third. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014), 2.
[2] What is an “expositional” sermon?, 9Marks, accessed September 28, 2023, https://www.9marks.org/answer/what-expositional-sermon/#:~:text=An%20expositional%20sermon%20is%20a,the%20lives%20of%20one%27s%20hearers.
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