Two nights ago, my wife and I had a conversation with Mark Dever.  He did most of the talking.  In his book Nine Marks of a Healthy Church (2nd ed.), Dever discusses nine essential characteristics a church must pursue and establish in order to be truly (Biblically) healthy.  The first mark of a healthy church is expository preaching. 

What is expository preaching?  Expository preaching is usually discussed in contrast to topical preaching. Preparation for a topical sermon usually begins with a specific issue that the preacher wants to preach about (e.g. holiness, parenting, etc.).  The preacher then goes into the Scripture to see what the Bible says about this topic.  “The material is combined and woven together around this one topic.  The topical sermon is not bulit around one text of Scripture but around this one chosen theme or idea” (39-40). 

On the other hand, when preparing to preach expositionally, the preacher will study a particular text and teach the main point of that text, say, like, Hebrews 3:12-14.  Dever writes,

In preparing my normal expositional sermon, I am often a bit surprised by the things I find in the passage as I study it.  Generally, I do not choose series of expositional sermons because of particular topics that I think the church needs to hear about.  Rather, I assume that all of the Bible is relevant to us all of the time (40).

What does it look like in the pulpit?  Dever again,

Expositional preaching is not simply producing a verbal commentary on some passage of Scripture.  Rather, expostional preaching is that preaching which takes for the point of a sermon the point of a particular passage of Scripture.  That’s it.  The preacher opens the Word and unfolds it for the people of God (40).  

But, this expository approach to preaching is optional, right?  Take it or leave it?  Nope.  Dever argues,

The first mark of a healthy church is expositional preaching.  It is not only the first mark; it is far and away the most important of them all, because if you get this one right, all of the others should follow…It is so important that, if you miss this one and get all the other eight marks right, in a sense these others would be just so many accidents.  You would have just happened to get them right.  They may be discarded or distorted, because they didn’t spring from the Word and they’re not continually being reshaped and refreshed by it.  But if you get the priority of the Word established, then you have in place the single most important aspect of the church’s life, and growing health is virtually assured, because God has decided to act by His Spirit through His Word (39).

Opening God’s Word to His people; word by word, phrase by phrase, verse by verse, and passage by passage; this is what preachers must do.  I will close with a final paragraph from Dever,

Expositional preaching is preaching in service to the Word.  It presumes a belief in the authority of Scripture–that the Bible is actually God’s Word; but it is something much more than that.  A commitment to expositional preaching is a commitment to hear God’s Word-not just to affirm that it is God’s Word but to actually submit yourself to it.  The Old Testament prophets and the New Testament apostles were given, not a personal commission to go and speak, but a particular message to deliver.  Likewise Christian preachers today have authority to speak from God only so long as they speak His message and unfold His words.  As loquacious as some preachers may be, preachers are not commanded to simply go and preach.  They are commanded specifically to go and preach the Word.  That’s what preachers are commanded to preach (40-41, emphasis mine).