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  A PECULIAR ACT OF WORSHIP
  by John Piper
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Summary: This sermon emphasizes the importance of expository exaltation
in preaching, where the preacher's heart exalts over the truths found in
the Bible, making much of God's greatness and beauty. The sermon
highlights the need for preaching to be a faithful declaration of the
Word, explaining the meaning of Scripture and exalting over its beauty.
It stresses the connection between teaching and preaching, where
teaching is essential in helping the congregation understand the truths
being proclaimed. Ultimately, the goal of preaching is to glorify God by
rightly knowing His truth and cherishing His worth in both mind and
heart.

Duration: 55:03 Topics: "Expository Preaching", "Glorifying God"
Scripture References: 2 Timothy 3:16, 2 Timothy 4:2, Ephesians 3:8, 1 Corinthians 10:31, Romans 11:36, Isaiah 43:6, Psalms 19:1, Isaiah 48:9, Ephesians 1:4, Colossians 1:16

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DESCRIPTION
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This sermon emphasizes the importance of expository exaltation in
preaching, where the preacher's heart exalts over the truths found in
the Bible, making much of God's greatness and beauty. The sermon
highlights the need for preaching to be a faithful declaration of the
Word, explaining the meaning of Scripture and exalting over its beauty.
It stresses the connection between teaching and preaching, where
teaching is essential in helping the congregation understand the truths
being proclaimed. Ultimately, the goal of preaching is to glorify God by
rightly knowing His truth and cherishing His worth in both mind and
heart.

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CONTENT
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Let me pray. Father, come and help me be faithful to your Word. Help me
to be clear.

Grant us communion of understanding and heart. Teach us from your Word
about the nature of preaching, I pray, and how glorious the calling is
in Jesus' name, amen. So our focus is on preaching, and specifically
preaching understood as expository exaltation.

So that's what I call preaching. And so my point for these next 45
minutes or so is to just explain what I mean by that phrase, expository
exaltation. And we were talking in the car on the way down that there's
a translation problem with the word exaltation, because in English it's
a problem.

There are two words in English. Exaltation, spelled with an A,
exaltation, and exaltation, spelled with a U, exaltation. Those are not
the same words in English.

And I am using the word exaltation, and here's the difference. When you
exalt someone, you praise them. You make them great.

You build them up. Exalt. You exalt somebody by saying good things about
them.

That's not the word I'm using, though it's a great word, especially in
relation to God. When you exalt, with a U, you don't do it to anybody.
You do it over something.

I exalt over this singing. I'm exalting over your singing. I'm exalting
over God's grace.

I'm exalting over my wife. So I do the exalting, and I don't do it to
anything. That's the word I'm using.

And here's the reason it matters. Because I'm arguing that preaching
should be an exaltation in me, in the preacher. He's doing an exalting
over what he sees in the Bible.

He sees great things in the Bible, and his heart exalts over them. And
in doing that, he exalts them. He makes much of them.

So my Christian hedonism that I preached on the past few days, that God
is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in him, is built
right into this definition of preaching. When the preacher is satisfied
in what he's seeing, he's loving it, he's enjoying it, in that way he
makes much of God. He makes much of the truth, makes much of Scripture.

So that's the end of my definition problem. So let's see if we can just
get into it. What do I mean by expository? That one's pretty plain, I
think.

I mean that all preaching should be the explanation of the meaning of
text in the Bible, the explanation of passages of Scripture. And by that
I mean what did the biblical authors originally intend to communicate?
What did they intend to communicate? And since I believe they were
inspired by God, that's the same as saying what did God intend to
communicate? Which means a preacher is not preaching his own ideas. He's
trying to shape his ideas by what is intended by these original words.

That's exposition. We are explaining what is in the Bible. And I would
add this, good preaching shows the people how he got the meaning from
the text.

Like you might close your Bible and say, the Bible says, like Billy
Graham, the Bible says, and then state your doctrine. Well, how do they
know? How do they know whether the Bible says? You say the Bible says,
how do they know if you don't show them? So I think good preaching takes
people to the text and explains the text in such a way that the people
can see the meaning in the text. Otherwise, you become the authority,
not God.

The authority is here, right? The authority is not here, not here. This
is not the authority. This is the authority.

So the people, when they hear words coming out of my mouth, they need to
see that those words have been shaped by this. So that's what I mean by
expository. You say what the Bible intends and you explain it in a way
that the people can see it's really there because the authority is here.

That's what I mean by expository. Now what about exaltation? The
preacher, when he's preaching, should exalt over the beauty of the truth
that he sees in the text. The text does not just have meaning, it has
beauty, it has worth, it has value, it has greatness, and the heart of
the preacher should correspond to the beauty and the worth, the value,
the greatness of what he's seeing in the text.

That's exaltation. Now I know that not all biblical truth is beautiful.
Sin is not beautiful.

Death is not beautiful. Hell is not beautiful, and they must be
preached. So here's how I put those together.

When a preacher preaches on sin, preaches on death, preaches on hell, he
does so precisely in the service of the beauty of the gospel. He takes
up hell, he takes up sin, he takes up death in order to make God look
glorious, God look beautiful, the gospel look great, which means that
even though he will, in his heart, groan over sin, groan over hell,
groan over the death of someone in the congregation, that groaning in
the context of the sermon is going to serve the exaltation over what a
great God we have, what a great gospel we have. I love to preach at
funerals.

I would rather preach at a funeral than a wedding any day. People are in
need of help at a funeral. They want you to say something.

Help me deal with this. At a wedding, they just want you to be finished.
Get out of the way.

We've got other things to do. Although I just preached at my daughter's
wedding Saturday a week ago, 10 days ago, and I loved it. I preached
from Isaiah 57, 15.

The Lord is high and lifted up and dwells with those who are belowly in
contrite spirit to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the
hearts of the contrite, and I looked in their eyes and I said, he will
revive you a thousand times. He will revive this marriage a thousand
times. So, expository, exaltation.

We faithfully preach when we make the meaning of the Scriptures clear so
that people can see the meaning that's really there, and we preach when
that meaning moves us. We love what we are seeing in the Bible. We
rejoice over it.

We exult in it, and when those two come together, expository,
exaltation, you have preaching. That's my understanding of preaching.
So, if biblical truth is clear from our mouths, but the preciousness and
the sweetness of the truth is not clear from our hearts, we're not
preaching.

We're lying. We're lying about the truth. But if we explain something
perfectly, the meaning is crystal clear, and our whole demeanor, our
whole countenance and voice and heart communicates, that's of no
significance to me.

That has no value for me. We're lying. We're not telling the truth about
the beauty and the truth and the value.

Preaching cannot just be accurate interpretation. It's not preaching.
It's lying, because the truth is so valuable.

Or, to turn it around, if our excitement abounds, our hearts are full,
and the truth is not in our mouth, we're preaching some other god, a
misinterpretation of the Bible. We're not preaching. We're performing.

Just lots of energy, lots of waving your arms around, and no truth
coming out of the mouth. That's not preaching. So, you can make a
mistake over here with emotionalism, and you can make a mistake over
here with intellectualism, get your meaning precisely right, and have no
feelings.

It's blank, dull, dead, nothing. That's not preaching. That's lying.

Or, you can be all excited, and you're not saying anything worth
hearing. You're not telling the truth. You're not taking people deep
into the riches.

That's not preaching. That's just performing. So, I'm pretty picky about
what I think preaching is.

Now, here's my question. That's my definition, my effort to explain what
it is. Why does expository exaltation exist? Or, to put it another way,
why did God plan that expository exaltation should be an essential part
of Christian worship? Why? To answer that question, I want to go all the
way back before creation and ask, why does anything exist? I don't think
you can answer why preaching exists in worship without asking the
question and answering it, why does anything exist? My answer to that
question, why does anything or everything exist, is that God has
created, God governs, God redeems, God consummates everything for his
glory.

Isaiah 43, 6, Bring my sons from afar, my daughters from the end of the
earth, everyone whom I created for my glory. Creation is for the glory
of God. The heavens are telling the glory of God, Psalm 19.

Or, Isaiah 48, 9 to 11, For my namesake, I defer my anger. For the sake
of my praise, I restrain it for you. For my own sake, for my own sake, I
do it.

How shall my name be profane? My glory I will not give to another. I
think that's probably the most God-centered three verses in the Bible.
Isaiah 48, 9 to 11.

Or, Ephesians 1, verse 4, God chose us in Christ before the foundation
of the world. He predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through
Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of the
glory of his grace. So not only did he create all things for his glory,
he chose and predestined and redeemed through Christ for the praise of
his glorious grace, or the praise of his glory of his grace.

Or, Colossians 1, 16, All things were created through Christ and for
Christ. At that sentence, all things were created through Christ and for
Christ, is the banner or the motto over the little school that we
started at our church. It's an amazing sentence.

Everything, computers, pianos, lighting, woodwork, floors, walls, trees,
air, human beings, clothes, are for Christ. If that gets a hold of your
congregation, things will be amazing. Romans 11, 36, From him and
through him and to him are all things.

To him be glory forever and ever. So those are just a few passages.
There are dozens and dozens of passages to the effect that, why does
everything exist? Everything exists for the glory of God.

Everything is to him, everything is for him, everything is for his
glory, everything is for his namesake, everything is to the praise of
the glory of his grace. So the ultimate purpose of everything,
everything, no exceptions, Satan included, the ultimate purpose of
everything is the glory of God in Christ, communicated to the world as
great and beautiful and valuable. So God created all things, sustains
all things, guides all things, controls all things, redeems his people,
brings everything to consummation in order to communicate the greatness,
the beauty, and the value of his glory.

Until you get that big picture, you can't really answer the question,
why preaching? Why is there such a thing as preaching in the world and
in worship? God's communication of his glory as the highest value in the
universe is what love is. Now I say that just because, I don't know how
it is here, in Holland, but in America most Christians have been raised
on the love of God as the central reality in the universe, and the
central reality in their experience, the love of God. And so they will
ask me, well you just spent ten minutes explaining that God's ultimate
purpose in all things is to display and communicate his glory.

Where's the love of God? Well, why haven't you mentioned the love of
God? Isn't that central to why things exist? And my answer to that is
God's communication of the greatness, the beauty, and the worth of his
glory to us for our everlasting enjoyment is what love is. And that's
shocking to a lot of people because they don't think of love as
primarily God giving God to us for our enjoyment of God. They think of
love as God helping us do what we want to do.

I want to get married. You help me get married, I feel loved. I want to
get a job.

If you help me get a job, I feel loved. I want to get well from this
sickness. If you make me well, I will feel loved.

And all that's true, it's true. It's just not the main thing. The main
way God loves people is by giving himself through Jesus Christ to people
so that people can enjoy what satisfies family God.

Health doesn't satisfy, marriage doesn't satisfy, jobs don't satisfy,
God satisfies. If God doesn't give me God, he doesn't love me. You have
to have a God-centered view of the universe even to know what love is in
the Bible.

So my answer, where is love in this picture? It's everywhere. And you
add to that that in order to give himself to us so that we could see and
enjoy his worth and his beauty and his greatness, when we're dead in
trespasses and sins, his Son died for us. So in this is love, that while
we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

So God has not only given himself to us to see and enjoy, he has removed
every obstacle, his wrath and our sin, so that we could see him and
enjoy him forever. So now the question becomes, okay, if the reason
everything exists is for the glory of God, that is God's communication
of himself to us for our enjoyment, what does that have to do with
Christian living and then finally Christian preaching? Just a word about
Christian living. If this was a different conference, we would do the
whole conference on what difference does that make for Christian living.

But the answer, of course, as you know, is 1 Corinthians 10 31. Whether
you eat or drink or whatever you do, that's very sweeping. Whatever you
do, but nothing is left out.

Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. So if God created
everything for his glory and you exist, you exist for his glory. And if
you think or feel or act, you should think for his glory, feel for his
glory, act for his glory.

That is, think and feel and act in such a way as to make him look more
valuable than anything. Did you get that? We should think and feel and
act in such a way that God appears to be more valuable than anything.
That's what glorify means.

Make God look more valuable than anything. So very practically, for
everybody in your church and you, it means eat. Eat in order to show
that God is more valuable than food.

Drink to show that God is more valuable than drink. Earn your money and
spend your money in such a way that shows God is more valuable than
money. Treat sex, deal with sex in your own life and in the world.

Treat sex in a way that shows God is more valuable than sex. Wear
clothing, dress. Teach the men and the women in your church to wear
clothes that show that God is more valuable than clothes.

That's what it means to do everything for the glory of God, which
requires a good deal of thinking. A good deal of thinking is the way I'm
dressing, drawing attention to the supreme value of God in my life. It's
the way I'm eating, drawing attention to the fact that God is supremely
valuable in my life.

Or am I giving the impression that I'm in bondage to this food? It's
really practical that God made the universe for his glory. It's very
practical. So that's enough on that.

We could, that's a whole conference. Do that another time. Come back to
Holland for another conference.

Let's talk, let's finish up on preaching. Why preaching? In view of the
fact that God does everything for his glory, why is there expository
exaltation? So I'm clearly arguing that preaching is expository
exaltation, and that belongs in your stated weekly worship services.
Preaching as expository exaltation belongs in those services because it
is absolutely unique and peculiar in the way it brings glory to God.

God is glorified in the preacher, God is glorified in the people. Now to
explain this further, let's open our Bibles to 2nd Timothy chapter 3,
verse 16, to chapter 4, verse 4. I'm going to read 2nd Timothy 3.16,
3.16, chapter 3, verse 16, and then we'll read down to chapter 4, verse
4. And you should pretend that the chapter division does not exist,
because it didn't originally. And chapter divisions trip us up very
often by making us think Paul took a vacation between chapter 3 and 4,
and he didn't even take a breath, in fact.

2nd Timothy 3.16, all scripture is breathed out, inspired, breathed out
by God, and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and
for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete,
equipped for every good work. I charge you, so don't don't even pause, I
charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge
the living and the dead, and by his appearing in his kingdom, preach the
Word. And I'm going to argue the Word that I was just talking about.

Don't make up some new word, I'm just talking about the God-breathed
Word. That's why the chapter division is a problem. For the time is
coming when people will not endure sound teaching.

Hmm, interesting. So preach the Word, because the time is coming when
people won't endure sound teaching. So we've got to wrestle with how
teaching and preaching relate to each other.

But having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves, teachers,
to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the
truth and wander off into myths. So I have four observations from this
text to bring us to a conclusion. And you can ask questions later about
this, I hope you do.

Observation number one, the setting of preaching. So in verse two,
preach the Word, preach the Word. The setting of preaching in this text
is not the market square where evangelism happens.

It is right to preach in public to unbelievers. That's good, that's
right, happens all through Acts, right? That's not what this text is
talking about. And the reason we know that is because in verse three,
the argument for why he gives to Timothy why he should preach the Word
is because professing Christians are going to be turning away from the
Word, right? The time is coming when, you see this in verse three, the
time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching.

So who's that talking about? That's not talking about unbelievers
passing you on the street. That's talking about a gathered group of
believers who over time drift away, fall away, they reject sound
teaching. So this is a setting in which Paul is saying, preach the Word
among Christians.

When you gather, let there be preaching. Now, in every generation, I
haven't lived in Holland, I don't know how it is here, I'll just tell
you my experience and then what I see in history as well. I've been more
or less a public minister about 50 years or so.

And in every generation, I would say every 30 years or so, there's a new
wave of opposition to preaching, new kinds of opposition. Like we don't
need that anymore. We don't need preaching anymore.

That's old, that one-way communication from one male human being,
especially a white male human being, to another group of people who just
sit there, that's just so out of date. And so let's replace it with
dialogue and conversation and discussion and drama and dance and movie
clips and so on. That's just so predictable, so predictable.

And it'll happen, if it isn't happening now, it'll happen in 10 years
and you'll have to be ready for it. So for 2,000 years, I think,
especially since the Reformation recovered the gospel power of
preaching, there have been obstacles and objections to it. But my
argument is, and we'll try to see it in the rest of these three points
that I'm going to make, my argument is there is something God ordained
and God designed about expository exaltation over this inspired word
that cannot be replaced by anything.

Now don't don't make a mistake, I think preaching is only one place in
the church where Bible saturated ministry happens. I think there ought
to be small groups saturated with the Bible, counseling saturated with
the Bible, evangelism saturated with the Bible, Sunday school classes
saturated with the Bible. I'm not calling any of that into question.

I'm saying if you think those can replace preaching, then you're not
grasping this text, I would argue. Paul says, preach the word. So let's
let's go to that one.

Observation number two. In verse two, when you see the phrase, preach
the word, that's a command to Timothy, the pastor, preach the word. The
word is keruxon, right, from kerusso, keruxon ton logon, an imperative
of kerusso.

And the word is not teach, it's not discuss, it's not share. Kerusso has
a particular meaning. It's the work of a herald.

That word, you know that word in English? Herald, a town crier. Hear ye,
hear ye, hear ye, the king has a message. He opens his scroll like this,
you know, this is before Internet, before television, before radio.

You got to have a way of communication from the king in Rome to all
over. How do you do it? You send town criers. They're called heralds,
they're called kerux, they're called people who do this preaching.

The king has a message, all the rebels who will lay down their arms and
accept the terms of the treaty will be forgiven by the king. That's
preaching. Keruxon ton logon, you're announcing, you're declaring the
news from an authority, from the king.

And by implication, here's my argument, now you, this is a little bit of
a jump so you can reject this without rejecting the Bible. I hope you
don't reject it. I'm arguing that a faithful herald, a faithful town
crier, a faithful preacher cannot be indifferent to the worth of his
message.

If he's indifferent, if he communicates that the worth of the message is
small, this is not very important folks, but it's my job, I'm supposed
to do this, you know. The king paid me to travel and read this to you.
If that's what the people are seeing, you're not a faithful town crier
because you're dishonoring the king.

You're not honoring the king if you say, well my job is to tell you what
he says, but I think frankly the message is boring, and there are a lot
of preachers who preach that way. It's sad. Some of them are broken men.

They're just emotionally broken. They don't have, they didn't grow up in
homes where there was any exaltation. Their fathers never said anything
positive about them.

They just discouraged people making a living trying to tell you what's
in the Bible. That's just sad. That's sad, and if you know preachers
like that, or you are one, get some men around you and ask for help.

You need help. We're all broken, okay. We're all broken people
emotionally.

There are no perfectly whole people, and cultures are different. Good
grief. I'm watching this Dutch culture and thinking, hmm, that's
different.

That's a different way to do Sunday morning than we do it, for sure. So
I want to take that into account. You've got cultural issues, you've got
family issues, you've got personality issues, all kinds of issues.

Mental health issues that govern how you come across as a pastor, and
I'm pleading with you, if you are communicating that what you are
explaining is not very precious, not very beautiful, not very valuable,
you need to take a break. I took an eight-month break. I asked my church
for an eight-month leave in 2010.

I said, I just need to do a soul check. S-O-U-L. Soul check.

I want to check my motives. I want to check my marriage. I want to check
my parenting.

I want to check my whole life, and I need to step back to make sure I'm
not being driven by the world, by books, by notoriety, and so it's okay.
It's okay. I mean, I hope you have elders and a church that would give
you a break and let you search your soul, because if the soul isn't
right with God, it's gonna be very hard to be a faithful town crier, a
faithful herald of the Word of God.

Paul said in Ephesians 3.8, to me this grace was given, and I think
everyone, all you pastors should be able to say this with Paul, to me
this grace was given to preach to the Gentiles, the nations, all the
people, to preach them the unsearchable riches of Christ. What a summary
of his job. My job is to unroll the scroll of the King's book and make
these people see the unsearchable riches, which means if you don't have
capacities to feel them, you got a problem, because how are your people,
how are your people going to know there are riches here? It's better
than money.

It's better than sex. It's better than fame. How are they gonna know
that? How are they gonna feel that if their preacher doesn't look like
that's true? I visit churches when we're on vacation, and Noel and I go
to churches, and we walk out, and I just think, why would anybody go
back? He just beat them up.

He gave them some moralistic advice. There's nothing glorious, nothing
beautiful, nothing big, nothing enriching, nothing ennobling, nothing
powerful, nothing. It was just, you might as well go to a, you know, a
secular how-to person, and that's really sad.

So, unsearchable riches is what we handle, and we are responsible to
preach it. KERUKSON TONLOGON. Third observation.

Right there in verse 2, it says, preach the Word. The Word. TONLOGON.

Now, my argument is that in the context, if you ignore the chapter
division, that is referring to the scriptures of verse 16, chapter 3.
All scriptures are inspired by God. They're profitable for all this
equipping, because he said, preach the Word, and he said, preach the
Word. That Word.

So, that's my argument, which means, now Paul's referring to the Old
Testament, right? New Testament hadn't been written yet. He's writing
it. So, when he says, preach the Word, he means the first two thirds of
your Bible.

Now, you guys are good at singing that. I get you sing psalms on Sunday.
That's good.

We can talk in the Q&A whether you should only sing psalms on Sunday. I
have my opinion. But, wouldn't you all... What we can't agree on is that
when he says the scriptures are inspired, he means the whole book.

Because, by implication, Jesus was making provision for his apostles to
preserve the whole counsel of God. So, we've got a book, and when he
says, preach the Word in the context of the inspiration of the
scriptures, he means preach the whole Word. So, there's a whole counsel
of God here.

Now, I know the book is too big. It's really too big to preach carefully
on every phrase in the Bible in a 50-year ministry. You can't do it.

It won't happen. So, you have to be selective and do overviews for some
places and dig down deep into other places. But, the whole book is
important.

The whole book equips. I try to read through the whole Bible every year.
I have done that for 30 years at least.

The whole Bible every year. I'm on pace as of yesterday. I've got an app
on my Bible, Logos Bible Software.

It's a discipleship journal. Tells me exactly how much I need to read
every day. So, I read it on my iPad and I love it.

I love it. And, I cannot overemphasize the effect it has. Whether you
understand all the particularities of Leviticus or all the
particularities of Obadiah, the effect that the whole Bible has on your
mind and heart to make you a faithful interpreter of its parts is simply
enormous.

It's huge. So, I would encourage so much reading through and immersing
yourself in the whole Bible. But, this third point is simply that the
focus of your preaching is the Word.

And, let me say one more thing before we look at our last point. When I
say the Word, I mean to draw attention to the fact that it is a
remarkable thing, an amazing thing that God has chosen to communicate
the riches of his glory through words. Dutch words, English words, Greek
words, Hebrew words, which means that we have to take those words really
seriously and be good students.

How do these words become phrases? How do the phrases become clauses?
How do the clauses fit together logically to make a paragraph that has
an argument? How do the paragraphs fit together to make a flow of
arguments so that I can show the people how it makes sense? That's
amazing that God, it's like the incarnation, isn't it? That God would
become a human being and that God's Word would become prepositional
phrases, verbs, nouns. It's just amazing, which means it may feel when
you're studying Greek or just doing a very serious Bible study in Dutch,
it may feel, oh, this is so ordinary and nitty-gritty and it's like
going to school again, you know, and you're handling infinitely valuable
things. And so, I think of words as windows when they are rightly
understood.

Words are windows through which we see unsearchable riches. And that's
what your people have to experience. That's why I think a lot about
expository exaltation.

They have to see the words with you. With your help, they have to see
how those words are communicating a glorious life-changing truth, and
then they have to see that pastor really believes this. He really feels
the value of this.

I'm going to come back just to watch him next time. I'm going to watch
him enjoy this. You don't know this story probably, but Benjamin
Franklin, who wrote our Declaration of Independence from England, what,
250 years ago, Benjamin Franklin was a good friend of George Whitefield.

Franklin was a deist. He didn't believe anything about the Bible, except
that it wasn't true. Whitefield was a glorious gospel minister who
preached the gospel, and they were friends.

And somebody asked Franklin, why do you go hear him? You don't believe
anything he says. He said, but he does. That's really significant, man.

People will come back who don't believe what you say because they've
never seen anybody that really is serious, humble, serious, and
passionate about something. And they start to feel like, yikes, this may
be true. Okay, one more observation.

I said we needed to talk about the relationship between teaching and
preaching. So here we are now in Chapter 4, and I'm going to argue now
that preaching, as I've tried to describe it, includes teaching. It's
more than teaching, but not less than teaching.

And the reason I say that is just because of the way Paul argues here.
Isn't it strange? He says in verse 2, preach, that's caruso, preach the
word. And the reason he says we must faithfully preach the word is the
time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching.

That doesn't even make sense unless teaching is in preaching. Preach the
word, because if you don't preach the word, people are going to leave
sound teaching. So didosco, teach, would be explain it, make sure they
understand it, do the hard work of explaining, illustrating.

You've got to help your people understand hard things. They weren't born
understanding justification. They don't have a clue what that is, or
sanctification, or glorification, or redemption, or atonement, or
propitiation.

They don't know anything about those things. Explain, explain, explain,
and in the explaining, exalt, exalt, exalt. So don't hear me making a
hard distinction between teaching and preaching.

Good preaching, since I call it expository, has teaching in it. It's
like the town crier who opens his message from the king, that would be
the Bible, and he reads, the king declares that there will be an amnesty
for all rebels who will lay down their arms and trust the king's
provision. And the little boy in the front row says, I don't know that
word amnesty.

It's the job of the town crier to make sure they know what he just said.
I said there's an amnesty. Well, little fella, it means that he won't
count your dad's rebellion against him if he would come and lay down his
sword here and swear allegiance to the king.

He won't punish him. He'll let it go. He'll make peace.

So you've got to explain things, and boy, we need to be good at that. We
need to be good explainers. I think your people are so many people who
think that people need to be entertained.

You know what? People know that churches cannot entertain them as well
as YouTube can entertain them. Churches can't compete with television.
Churches can't compete with the internet, and they don't expect you to.

If they're coming, if they want to visit, if somebody invites them to
come, they want to know these people say they believe in God, and they
say this book has value. Show me. Tell me.

Explain it to me. They want to hear God. What does God have to say? And
when they read something, they say, I don't get that at all.

That makes no sense to me whatsoever. And you're looking right at them,
and you say, I get that. I know you don't understand that.

Let me take five minutes to unpack that and illustrate that for you so
you get it. I just think there's thousands of people who want to do that
in your church. They want to come and say, come on, show me something
glorious.

Show me something beautiful. Make it crystal clear to me. Treat me as a
person with a brain and a person with a heart and a mind and hands, and
I just might wake up to the truth.

So teaching is involved in expository exaltation. So let me conclude.
The heralding of God's Word should happen in such a way that it includes
exaltation and exposition.

So exaltation over the beauties of the King's message and exposition
that labors to make the King's meaning clear. So the message has beauty
and worth, value, greatness, and exaltation manifests that. And the
exposition is helping the people understand it in their minds.

So we clarify the truth and the reality of the King's meaning, and we
magnify the beauty and worth of the King's message. Now let me circle
back where I was at the beginning. How has God designed preaching to
glorify God? How has he done that? How does preaching become worship
that helps other people worship? Become God glorifying in a way that
helps other people glorify God? And it boils down to something very
simple.

See if I can put it like this. God is glorified by his truth being
rightly known. Okay, that's my first thing.

God is glorified by his truth being rightly known. And secondly, his
worth being rightly felt. Those two things.

So in preaching, your people have minds and your people have hearts. To
glorify God in the realm of the mind, truth, rightly understood, God
rightly understood. So we got to have our doctrine clear and faithful to
the Bible.

And then they have hearts. And they don't glorify God if their hearts
don't cherish the worth of what you have just shown them in their minds.
If our knowledge of God is big and our affections for God are little, we
don't glorify God the way we should.

And if our affections, our emotions for God are big and overflowing, but
the God we communicate is small or unbiblical, then we don't glorify God
the way we should. So God is glorified. God is worshiped when the
preacher sees the truth about God and feels the preciousness of God in
the biblical text.

And he'll help his people live for the glory of God if he explains what
he sees and exalts over what he feels. That is faithful biblical
preaching, expository exaltation. Amen.

Let me pray and then we'll make a transition to the Q&A. Father, if I've
said anything that is wrong or unbiblical or out of proportion, I pray
that you protect these brothers from it. And if I've said what is true,
I pray that you confirm it in their minds and in their hearts and that
you would take them down deep into your word, into your vision for
preaching.

For the glory of your name and the good of your people, I pray in Jesus'
name, amen.

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Video: https://sermonindex2.b-cdn.net/2QYTVIFI_wQ.mp4
Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/john-piper/a-peculiar-act-of-worship/
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