Why Many Christians Know the Bible but Miss the Story
A couple weeks ago, I was reminded of the quiet power of expositional preaching.
Our church is currently working through a series on the kings of Judah. A few Sundays ago, we studied the story of Jehoshaphat in 2 Chronicles 20, where Judah faces an overwhelming coalition of enemies. The king gathers the people to seek the Lord, and in a remarkable turn of events, God grants victory without Judah ever needing to fight.
A few days later, in the middle of a conversation about the future of a ministry partnership, a friend referenced that very passage. We had been discussing plans, strategies, and possible outcomes. Then he simply said, “It’s like Jehoshaphat. We prepare and walk forward in obedience, but ultimately the battle belongs to the Lord.”
It was a perfect moment.
The Word that had been faithfully preached on Sunday had quietly taken root and surfaced exactly when it was needed. In that moment, the sermon was doing what preaching is meant to do. It was shaping how we interpreted the circumstances of our lives. This is one of the great strengths of expositional preaching.
When pastors carefully work through passages of Scripture, week after week, they plant the Word of God deep in a congregation’s imagination. Stories, commands, and promises begin to shape how people see the world, how they follow Jesus, and how they respond to the challenges of life.
At its best, expositional preaching does more than explain the text. It exalts Christ, anchors us in the gospel, and invites us to depend on the Spirit who leads us into truth (John 16:13). It teaches us how to obey God while continually reminding us that the Christian life is lived not by human effort alone, but through the power of the Spirit and the finished work of Christ. This is why faithful exposition remains one of the great gifts Christ has given to his church.
But moments like this also raise an important question. If expositional preaching is so powerful (and it is!), what exactly is it meant to produce in the people who hear it?
Is the goal simply deeper knowledge of the text? Or is Scripture aiming at something more?
If we read the Bible carefully, one thing becomes clear. Scripture itself teaches us that some things matter more than others. Jesus makes this explicit:
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind… And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
(Matthew 22:37–40)
Everything else hangs on these. The Law and the Prophets. The entire moral vision of the Old Testament. All of it ultimately serves the formation of love for God and love for neighbor.
Paul reinforces this hierarchy in his famous reflection on spiritual gifts:
“So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”
(1 Corinthians 13:13)
Love stands above the rest. But Scripture does not leave love undefined.
Biblical love is not sentiment, tolerance, or affirmation detached from truth. Love is the culmination of a life shaped by the character of God and formed through the work of the Spirit. When love is separated from the virtues that define it, it quickly becomes something else entirely…a worldly form of love that permits sin, redefines God’s Word, and eventually abandons the gospel of grace.
The New Testament, however, gives us a picture of how Christian character is formed with truth and love. Peter describes maturity as a progression of virtue:
“Make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control…”
(2 Peter 1:5–7)
Faith gives rise to virtue. Knowledge deepens wisdom. Character is strengthened through discipline and perseverance. The Christian life is not merely the accumulation of information but the formation of a particular kind of person. And that formation is ultimately the work of the Spirit.
When Paul describes the visible evidence of the Spirit’s presence in a believer’s life, he does not point first to intellectual mastery or interpretive precision. He points to fruit:
“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.”
(Galatians 5:22–23)
These virtues are not simply ideals. They are the manifest work of the Spirit shaping a believer’s life. The virtues described in these passages ultimately reflect the character of Christ himself. The Spirit forms these qualities in believers so that the life of Jesus becomes visible in his people.
Sometimes that work becomes visible in particular moments: a decision marked by patience, an act of costly kindness, or a posture of gentleness in conflict. Over time, these moments accumulate into a pattern of life. Character is formed. Maturity emerges. And this is what the Spirit produces in a life shaped by the gospel.
Which means the ultimate aim of Scripture is not merely that people understand the Bible. It is that people become like Christ. If the New Testament consistently emphasizes the formation of virtue and the fruit of the Spirit, it raises an important question about how we teach the Bible. What kind of disciples are our preaching models actually forming?
In many churches, the dominant experience of preaching is what we might call low-level exposition: careful explanation of a passage in its immediate context, often moving verse by verse through a book of the Bible. There is much to commend about this approach. It guards against speculation, forces the preacher to submit to the text, and exposes the church to the full counsel of Scripture over time. But like any good practice, it can also develop unintended side effects.
When the primary diet of teaching remains almost exclusively at the level of detailed explanation, people may begin to assume that Christian maturity is primarily measured by how well someone understands the text. The subtle message becomes this: the goal of discipleship is deeper biblical knowledge.
And while knowledge is deeply important, the New Testament repeatedly reminds us that knowledge alone is never the end goal. Knowledge is meant to serve transformation. Paul hints at this tension when he writes:
“Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.”
(1 Corinthians 8:1)
Knowledge without love can actually distort the very purpose of Scripture. Peter does not simply call believers to grow in knowledge. He calls them to supplement knowledge with self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly affection, and love (2 Peter 1:5–7). The goal of Christian teaching is not merely to have people explain the Bible. It is that people increasingly resemble Christ.
Theologian Richard Lints offers a helpful framework for thinking about how Scripture should be read and taught. In The Fabric of Theology, he describes three interpretive horizons that shape faithful understanding of the Bible.
The first is the textual horizon.
This is the level where most expositional preaching operates. At the textual horizon, we ask questions about the immediate meaning of a passage. What did the author intend? How does the grammar function? What is happening in the surrounding context? These questions are essential. Faithful preaching must begin here. But the textual horizon is not the only horizon.
Lints also describes the epochal horizon, which asks where a passage sits within the unfolding story of redemption. Scripture is not a collection of disconnected teachings. It is a unified narrative that unfolds across covenants, generations, and eras.
Finally, there is the canonical horizon. No passage stands alone. The Bible interprets the Bible. The Prophets illuminate the Law. The Gospels fulfill the promises of the Old Testament. The Epistles explain the implications of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection.
Faithful teaching requires attention to all three horizons.
But in many churches today, preaching lives almost entirely at the textual horizon. People may understand individual passages but struggle to see the shape of the Bible itself. They know the parts. But they miss the story.
Even gospel-centered exposition, as valuable as it is, can sometimes remain limited if it never steps beyond the immediate passage. Seeing Christ in a passage is not the same as understanding the story that reveals Christ. Perhaps we should revive cross-references in our sermons in addition to rhetorical flourishes, and teach biblical themes in addition to making a bee-line to the gospel.
The gospel itself is the culmination of a story that begins in creation, unfolds through covenant and promise, reaches its climax in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and moves toward the final restoration of all things.
Creation.
Fall.
Redemption.
New creation.
And yet it is surprisingly rare to meet believers who can confidently explain that basic storyline. Many churches have become excellent at teaching passages of Scripture, but far fewer have learned how to teach the story of Scripture, and the disciples of those churches are evidence of this weakness.
In recent months, I have been walking through The Story-Formed Way with a small group, a resource developed by the team at Saturate. As participants step into the sweeping narrative of Scripture, from creation to new creation, they can begin to see familiar passages with new clarity. And the low-level narrative of the Kings of Judah becomes understood in light of God’s grand redemptive work and the basic epoch of law, prophets, and kings. This larger narrative framework does not diminish expositional preaching. It makes it more meaningful. The parts illuminate the whole. And the whole gives deeper meaning to the parts.
Richard Lints’ framework can also serve as a helpful guide for pastors and teachers.
- The textual horizon asks: What does this passage say?
- The epochal horizon asks: Where does this text sit in the story of redemption?
- The canonical horizon asks: How does the whole Bible illuminate this passage?
When preaching moves across all three horizons, something remarkable happens. People do not simply learn what a passage means. They begin to understand the story God is telling. And when believers see the story of Scripture clearly, the Word of God begins to shape not only their understanding, but their imagination, their worship, and their lives.
None of this means abandoning expositional preaching. The church needs faithful exposition of Scripture now more than ever. But exposition alone is not the final goal. Faithful preaching must lift our eyes beyond the immediate passage to the larger story God is telling. It must show how every passage ultimately finds its fulfillment in Christ. And it must remind us that the Spirit uses the Word not merely to inform us, but to transform us.
When preaching holds these horizons together (textual, epochal, and canonical), the result is more than biblical literacy. It is spiritual formation. Faith. Hope. Love.
The goal of Scripture is not simply to help us understand the Bible. The goal is that we become the kind of people who reflect the character of Christ. And when believers learn to see their lives within the story of God, passages like Jehoshaphat’s prayer are no longer just ancient history.
They become living reminders that the God who fought for Judah is still at work in the battles his people face today.
Leave a Reply