While the intellectual aspect of the kingdom is needed, kingdom preaching must also emphasize one’s personal experience of the kingdom. Experiential kingdom preaching proclaims how the individual and the community can experience the present, actual, and living rule of God in this life now. It calls for an ongoing, personal faith response of surrender to the rule of Christ. Experiential preaching makes the kingdom of God in Christ a relational reality; it becomes a person, a Savior, a King that one can relate to. By emphasizing personal relationship, kingdom preaching encourages inward intimacy and closeness, which are experiential by nature, with the King and His kingdom. The kingdom no longer remains solely “out there” for one to know, but it comes alive as a first hand experience of an “in here” reality.
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Preaching the kingdom of God effectively requires a balance between both the intellectual and the experiential aspects of the kingdom. To emphasize the intellectual to the exclusion of the experiential is to make the kingdom of God an impersonal object or concept that merely grows mold inside one’s mind. To only proclaim the experiential side to the exclusion of the intellectual is to reduce the kingdom to subjective emotional experience and makes the kingdom a mystical fog that one must live in.
To balance both the intellectual and experiential is to make the kingdom of God both an actual reality that one knows about and a vital connection that one knows of. Preaching both aspects makes the kingdom realm a precious pearl that one will seek after and an all-consuming presence that is vibrantly alive within us. Preaching that does not emphasize both of these aspects fails to communicate holistically to listeners and merely proclaims a one-dimensional kingdom.
Expository preaching has many definitions. Some are very narrow, while others are broader. Some are very limiting, and others are more giving. The most widely accepted definition of expository preaching is by Haddon Robinson. His definition states: “Expository preaching is the communication of a biblical concept, derived from and transmitted through a historical, grammatical, and literary study of a passage in its context, which the Holy Spirit first applies to the personality and experience of the preacher, then through the preacher, applies to the hearers.”5
Robinson’s definition has many great points. It emphasizes deriving preaching’s content from the biblical text, encourages thorough exegetical study, and focuses on personal application of truth before congregational application. While Robinson’s definition of expository preaching is helpful, it represents a narrow view of exposition. A narrow view of exposition confines the preacher to structuring his sermon completely around one primary biblical concept derived typically from only one biblical passage. Narrow exposition takes on a tunnel-like focus on one passage and insists on laser-like precision in dividing its truths before the people.
