During the 33 years that I was preaching regularly in the worship services of Bethlehem Baptist Church, I resisted with all my might any reference to the one half of the service as worship, and the other half as preaching or teaching.

No! I insisted that the way we talk about it be the way it is. In the one part of the service, we worship through song and prayer and confession and affirmation; and in the other part of the service, we worship through preaching and hearing preaching. It is all worship.

Which meant that the aim of my exposition in the sermon for those 33 years of preaching was in that moment of preaching to fuel in myself worship — to awaken worship, to experience worship — and at the same time draw my people into the experience of worship over the word — in response to the reality shining out of the word.

Preaching’s Highest Priority

The aim of preaching was only secondarily that marriages might hold together, or that our people might be honest and just in all their business dealings, or that they might witness with boldness to unbelievers, or that they might pray with fervor, or that they might give themselves to the cause of global missions, or that they might be generous so that the church budget can be met, and all the ministries carried out. If any of those things ever became the primary goal of my preaching, I believed I had ceased to preach biblically.

“My primary task, week in and week out, was to handle the Scriptures in such a way that I laid open the reality of God.”

And, of course, I longed for and prayed for the health of their marriages and their honesty in business, and their boldness in witness, and their fervor in prayer, and their zeal for missions, and their radical wartime lifestyles and sacrificial generosity. All of that is essential to the Christian life. But many pastors are so burdened by the urgency of these precious, practical things, that they subtly — or blatantly — make those things the primary aim of their preaching. And I think that is deadly.

I think all of those things — and the thousand other beautiful, practical fruit of biblical truth — flourish in the soil of worship. So, my primary task, week in and week out, was to handle the Scriptures in such a way that I laid open the reality of God and his work in Christ and in the human soul and in the world, so that hearts — first mine and then the people’s — might be enflamed with worship. Heart’s aflame with worship of God, kindled by a sight of the glory of God through the word of God — that’s the soil in which all God-glorifying, Christ-exalting, Spirit-dependent fruit of righteousness grows. And if it doesn’t grow there, it’s probably not Christian fruit at all.

Reality Demands a Response

So, what I want to persuade you of is that biblical preaching — the kind that Paul commands in 2 Timothy 4:2 — is worship. Or to say it more fully: preaching is expository worship. Or the phrase that I like to use for biblical preaching: expository exultation.

1. The text is opened so that the true meaning — the author’s intention in these words and clauses — and the reality communicated through that meaning, can be seen for what it is; that’s exposition.

2. And as it is opened, the preacher is responding to it — with his mind and his heart and his body — in a way that signals its proportionate worth and beauty; that’s exultation.

What I mean by the preacher’s signaling the proportionate worth and beauty of the reality behind the text is that the preacher’s response — with his heart and mind and body — should be fitting, suitable, proportional to the kind of reality seen through the text. So, for example, if the reality in the text is heavy the preacher is not lighthearted. If the reality in the text is sweet he’s not sour or dull. If the reality in the text is tender, he’s not harsh. If the reality is harsh, he is not tender. If the reality in the text is glorious the preacher is in awe.

And believe me, brothers, this can’t be faked. Spiritual people can tell if you are an actor playing an emotional role. Unspiritual people — you can fool them. But not real Christians, who have the Holy Spirit.

If every truth in the text elicits from the preacher the same pitch, the same tone, the same spiritual intensity, or if majestic realties find him in the same casual, chatty mode he uses for the illustration about his dog, or if the tender embrace of the prodigal by the Father finds him in a hard, condemning tone, the preacher is just not in touch with reality — and his people know it. Many of them are so used to that kind of preaching, they have lost a sense of how tragic it is and assume it’s normal.

So, here’s where we’re going. First, I will try to define what the inner essence of worship is. Then I will make try to show why biblical preaching not only aims at this worship in every message, but also is this worship in every message.

The Inner Essence of Worship

Let’s define the inner essence of what worship is. The reason I focus on the “inner essence of worship” is that the New Testament, unlike the Old Testament, is stunningly silent on the external specifics of what corporate worship should look like.

To Every Culture

I think the reason for this is so that the New Testament will be a relevant book of faith and life for all the cultures of the world. Old Testament Judaism was mainly a come-and-see religion. And New Testament Christianity is mainly a go-and-tell religion. And that means we are to take God’s word and incarnate it in every culture. So, there are hundreds of cultural outworkings of the inner essence of worship that are not prescribed in the New Testament.

It doesn’t tell us whether to worship in a building or under a tree, with two songs or ten songs, with or without worship leaders, with or without instruments — let alone which ones — with singing before or after or in the middle of preaching, in a thirty-minute service or a five-hour service, sitting or standing, with babies present or not, with pulpits or not, with banners or not, with men and women on the same side or separate, with casual clothes or formal, with a set order and flow or a different one each time, with congregational prayer or only from leaders, and on and on.

Worship by the Book

Worship in the New Testament is radically oriented on the experience of the heart, and is freed from specified forms and places. Jesus set the trajectory when he said to the woman at the well in John 4:21–23:

Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. . . . The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.

You see the shift in categories: worship will not take place only in this mountain or in Jerusalem, but (shift in categories) in spirit and in truth. Spirit and truth replace mountains and cities. So, the external, formal, geographical dimension of worship diminishes and the inner essence of worship is foregrounded. To many people’s surprise John Calvin put it like this:

[The Master] did not will in outward discipline and ceremonies to prescribe in detail what we ought to do (because he foresaw that this depended on the state of the times, and he did not deem one form suitable for all ages) . . . Because he has taught nothing specifically, and because these things are not necessary to salvation, and for the upbuilding of the church ought to be variously accommodated to the customs of each nation and age, it will be fitting (as the advantage of the church will require) to change and abrogate traditional practices and to establish new ones. Indeed, I admit that we ought not to charge into innovation rashly, suddenly, for insufficient cause. But love will best judge what may hurt or edify; and if we let love be our guide, all will be safe. (Institutes, 4.10.30)

And Martin Luther, as you might expect, put it like this:

The worship of God . . . should be free at table, in private rooms, downstairs, upstairs, at home, abroad, in all places, by all people, at all times. Whoever tells you anything else is lying as badly as the pope and the devil himself. (What Luther Says, 1546)

What Happens in the Heart?

In my effort to define worship biblically for Christians, I am not focusing on the external, but asking: What is the inner essence of it? What happens in the heart when the heart is worshiping? Of course, God intends for there to be outward acts of worship — spoken prayers and songs and affirmations of faith and so on. And of course, Paul says in Romans 12:1 that our entire bodily life of obedience is to be “a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”

“Worship in the New Testament is radically oriented on the experience of the heart.”

So, I’m not discounting or minimizing the necessity of external expressions of the worth of Christ. What I want to know is this: What must happen in the heart so that any of those external things are not just muscular movements, but real expressions of something authentic in the heart?

The Pharisees did many external acts of worship, but Jesus said that inside there were dead men’s bones and hypocrisy and lawlessness (Matthew 23:27–28).

Whether by Life or Death

The text that has crystalized the inner essence of worship for me most helpfully is Philippians 1:20–23. I’m going to streamline the argument here so we can get to preaching, but I hope it will be compelling. Paul says,

It is my eager expectation and hope that . . . Christ will be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death.

Christ Be Worshiped

Now I am assuming that worshipping Christ is virtually the same as magnifying Christ. So, this is really a text about Paul’s eager expectation and hope that Christ be worshiped in or through his body in life and death. Then he gives the basis for how his death would magnify Christ — or be an act of worship.

For to me . . . to die is gain.

And then he explains in verse 23 that the reason death would be gain for him is that death means departing and being with Christ, which he says is far better.

Magnified in Death

So here’s his argument: My dying will be a magnifying — an honoring of Christ, a worshiping of Christ — if in my dying I experience Christ as a treasure that is more satisfying than everything I am leaving behind. That’s what “gain” means. Death is gain because I get Christ.

But that’s only true if I experience Christ as a treasure that is more valuable, more satisfying to my soul, than everything I am losing in death. That is what turns my death into an act of worship — because the inner experience of my heart is to value him, treasure him, cherish him as more satisfying than everything I lose in death. That is what makes death worship.

Surpassing Worth

And this is confirmed if we see how Paul later unpacked the other half of verse 21, “to live is Christ.” He said in Philippians 3:8,

I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ.

So, death is “gain” because it brings us closer to Christ who is a more satisfying treasure than everything we lose in death. And life is Christ because, even before death, Paul had already resolved to count everything as loss compared already to the surpassing value of knowing Christ.

Experience the Treasure

So here’s my conclusion about worship: Experiencing Christ as a more satisfying treasure than everything we lose in death, and everything we have in life, is the inner essence of worship. That heart-experience of being satisfied with Christ — and all that God is for us in him — is the inner reality and essence of what Paul called magnifying Christ in life and death.

Let me clarify again: I’m not saying this inner essence is the totality of worship. Worship includes the outward expressions of that essence: We sing, we pray, we confess our sins, we affirm our faith, we sit, we stand, we kneel, we bow in silence, we lift our hands, we may even leap for joy — all that is worship, if it comes from this inner essence. And none is worship if it doesn’t. As Jesus said,

This people honors me with their lips,
   but their heart is far from me;
in vain do they worship me. (Matthew 15:8–9)

So to say it again, the inner essence of worship is the heart’s experience of Christ — and all that God is for us in him — as a more satisfying treasure than everything the world can give or death can take.

Can You Get Satisfaction?

You may ask: Why do you use the word “satisfying”? Why don’t you just say, “The inner essence of worship is having Christ as a greater treasure than everything in the world”? Why do you have to insert this word, “satisfying”?

Genuine Christianity

First, being satisfied with Christ really is implied in saying Christ is your greatest treasure, and I want to push it into people’s consciences that that’s what they’re saying when they claim to be Christian: to have Christ as their treasure. Because I fear that many people say he’s their treasure when in fact he doesn’t satisfy their souls. Money satisfies their souls. Earthly security and comfort satisfy their souls. Being married satisfies the soul. Or success or sex or sports or movies.

“I fear that many people say Jesus is their treasure when in fact he doesn’t satisfy their souls.”

I want to slam the door shut on the assumption that you can have Jesus as your greatest treasure, and yet have all your heart and emotions and affections cleaving to another reality for satisfaction. That’s not true. To have Jesus as your supreme treasure is to have him as your supreme satisfaction. And I think more preachers need to make this explicit, so that we help people not deceive themselves that they are Christians when they’re not.

Joyful Abandon

Here’s the second reason I define the inner essence of worship as experiencing Christ as a “satisfying” treasure, not just a treasure. Jesus said in Matthew 13:44,

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

I use the word “satisfy” because of that little phrase “from his joy” (apō tēs charas autou) he sells all that he has. This man did not just sell all that he had to get the treasure in the field. You can imagine doing that, oddly as it seems, with a dour disposition and under some kind of external coercion where he has no real delight in that treasure, but is driven by some ulterior motive. But Jesus utterly rules that out with the words, “in his joy” he sells all that he has.

The most essential inner mark of reality in closing with the treasure of the kingdom is that we don’t just sell everything else as less valuable, we feel everything else is less valuable. We sell it all in joyful abandon in order to have the all-satisfying Christ.

Where Righteousness Grows

So I’ll say it again: the inner essence of worship is experiencing Christ — and all that God is for us in him — as a more satisfying treasure than everything the world can give or death can take.

To be a Christian is to be born again into that. That experience of the inner essence of worship is the mark of the new creature in Christ. To live the Christian life in all of its practicalities is to continually act out of that. That experience of worship in the heart — the treasuring of Christ — is the soil where all the fruits of righteousness grow.

The Ultimate Aim of Preaching

And, therefore, the inner essence of worship must be the ultimate aim of preaching in every message, no matter the text, no matter the topic.

And my argument is that preaching that would awaken such worship in the hearts of the people, must strive, by the Spirit, to experience such worship in preaching. Preaching that would awaken worship by the Spirit, must seek to be worship by the Spirit. Preachers that aim for the people to be awed by the glory of Christ in the word of God, must stand in awe of what they have seen of Christ in the word of God.

Therefore, as we preach the treasure, we are treasuring. As we hold up the pearl for all to see in exposition, we are prizing the pearl. As we invite people to the banquet, we are savoring the feast. If, week in and week out, we are not awed, not treasuring, not prizing, not savoring, not worshiping over the word — we are hypocrites, and unfit for this great calling of expository exultation.

The Devil Can Do Exposition

Remember, the devil can do exposition of Scripture. He can take it and explain. And up to a point, he can even explain it accurately. And empty-headed, irrational people can exult over a biblical text when they have no idea what it means or what the reality is behind it. But neither the devil nor empty-headed, irrational people can exult over the glory of God revealed in a true exposition of Scripture.

“If you have some years left in the sacred privilege, don’t waste your pulpit.”

In other words, the devil cannot preach. Irrational, emotional people cannot preach. That is, they cannot do expository exultation. They cannot see the glories of Scripture for what they are, and love them, and exult over them for their true spiritual beauty.

But that is what preachers do. Preaching is a peculiar kind of worshiping speech designed by God for bringing the glories of his word to the people of his favor for the awakening of worship. And that peculiar kind of speech is captured in the New Testament by the two Greek words that “preaching” translates. It translates euangelizō and kērussō.

Heralds of Good News

Euangelizō is the speaking of one who brings good news of great joy. “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news (euangelizōmai) of great joy (Luke 2:10). Kērussō is the speech of one who heralds the weighty message of a great authority — like a town crier representing his king. Which is why Paul says in Romans 10:15, “How are they to preach (kēruxōsin) unless they are sent” — that is, unless they have some great authority behind them?

So, preaching, in bringing those two kinds of speech together, is unique. It’s not just teaching, it’s not conversation, it’s not discussion. Preaching is a unique kind of speech: It is heralding of the best news in all the world, from an infinitely powerful and glorious authority. It makes clear the meaning of biblical texts, and opens them so all can see the beauties and the glories of Christ in the good news; and it manifestly loves the goodness of that good news; and it feels the weight of God’s authority in it all. The King did not send his messengers to get the words right while the heart is wrong.

There is no speaking in the world like Christian preaching. It is utterly unique. And if the herald of this King, and the proclaimer of this news does not exult in this King and in this news, he is an unworthy herald. And he is not preaching.

A Constellation of Glory

The Christian preacher is never dealing with a mere body of facts to be clarified. He is dealing with a constellation of glories to be treasured. Paul calls them “the unsearchable riches of Christ” (Ephesians 3:8). And the preacher’s aim is that the people would experience these riches as a more satisfying treasure than everything the world can give or death can take.

And he knows — you know — that the pathway to their worship through preaching, is his own experience of worship in preaching. And I bear witness from decades of preaching that God in his mercy loves to show up behind the pulpit and turn exposition into exultation. And when he does, the joy is unsurpassed.

If death did not mean a closer, deeper, sweeter communion with Christ, I could wish to be young again. And if I were, I would preach. There is nothing like it in all the world. The weight of God’s authority. The unsearchable riches of Christ. The privilege of showing them to God’s people. The pleasure of seeing them yourself. And, by the Spirit, the awakening of worship in the hearts of God’s elect. O brothers, there is no greater calling. If you have some years left in the sacred privilege, don’t waste your pulpit.

Exult over the glorious realities of biblical truth, make them plain, and draw your people into your worship over the word.