Five Tasks for Preaching

Preaching, I would say, needs to accomplish five tasks.

First, preaching must make disciples of us all.  It must be Biblical interpretation.  It is about explaining what the passage meant in its context and how this message speaks authoritatively to us today.  The minister and the congregation sit under the authority of God’s Word.  We dare not distort it through ignorance or our own imaginations or desires.  The posture of good listeners is to sit quietly, hear, and honour the Bible’s message.  Listening to it interpreted leads us back to read it for ourselves. The Jews who listened to Paul in Berea ‘received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so’ (Acts 17.11).  Preaching is not about a preacher encapsulating the big idea of a passage and repackaging it in some more easily grasped form, as enticing as this might be, for to do so is to reduce it to some chosen part, like the child who will not eat the whole meal but only his favourite food.  By listening to such preaching, we do not just claim that Scripture is the Word of God; we treat it as such. Timothy George concludes his article, ‘How the Reformation Recovered Preaching’, by saying, ‘In the final analysis, the Reformation was a recovery of biblical preaching’.^[1]

Second, preaching must keep the Gospel of Jesus Christ central.  If you look at the context of the two words for preaching in the Greek New Testament, euangelizomai and kērussō, the focus of the message is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, or the Gospel of the Kingdom of God (two sides of the same coin, of course).  My suggestion is not that every sermon be a proclamation of the Gospel but that the preaching of the Church must be Gospel centred, and in saying so I mean equally that the Church’s preaching must be Christ centred.  The Gospel is the Good News of Jesus Christ.  Paul held to this principle of Gospel centred preaching when he wrote to the Corinthian Church, ‘And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. ² For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified’ (1 Corinthians 2.1-2).

Third, preaching should teach disciples the whole counsel of God, the content of the Word of God.  The preacher who preaches from only one side of the Bible is like the rower who rows with only one oar.  In addition, preaching is teaching, not something else.  The aim is to convey the full message of Scripture to an audience.  As Paul reminded Timothy, ‘All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, ¹⁷ that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work’ (2 Timothy 3.16-17).

Such preaching will differ depending on the audience, but the audiences also need to change the ways that they listen.  We must remember that the nature of Scripture and the nature of preaching Scripture involve teaching a congregation not only what Scripture says but also the discipline of listening well.  We do not say, ‘The class is rowdy, so we need to teach in such a way as to grab their attention over other things that interest them.’  We rather say, ‘We need to teach this rowdy class what it means to be good students, to sit quietly, to listen, and to be diligent.’  Indeed, the teaching of Scripture tames wild hearts and awakens passion for God and His Word.

Fourth, preaching should show the unity of the Scriptures. We must see Jesus Christ in our preaching of the Old Testament, not only in the New Testament.  We must draw out how Old Testament passages point forward to Jesus and how New Testament passages point backwards to the Old Testament, as Paul is concerned to do in, e.g., Galatians 2.15-4.31.  Expository preaching, preaching that explains the meaning of a passage of Scripture, may provide good teaching to a degree, but it is weak in teaching the unity of Scripture.  For that, we need both the exposition of passages and topical teaching on Biblical themes.  By seeking the unity of Scripture in preaching, our curriculum as disciples involves the exegesis of texts, the cohesiveness of Biblical theology, and the convictions of the Church.

Fifth, preaching is transformative speech.  It should transform its hearers.  The two disciples who listened to Jesus on the road to Emmaus said afterwards to each other, ‘Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?’ (Luke 24.32, ESV). This is because it is a proclamation of the living Word of God.  Scripture requires obedience.  Hebrews 4.12 says, ‘For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.’ Preaching God’s Word leads to doing it.  As James writes,

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. ²³ For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. ²⁴ For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. ²⁵ But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing (1.22-25).

It inspires awe.  It results in praise and worship.  It encourages and comforts.  It bears the message of salvation.  It does this and more not simply as good literature but as God’s Word.  If the preaching itself were transformative, we would rely on clever words and gripping stories.  It is transformative when the preacher lifts up the Living Word itself for the audience to see and does not himself get in the way.