The Place of Preaching in the Church Part 2

Rev. Martin Geluk. Trowel and Sword, June 1995.

Preamble: As the title suggests this is the second of four articles written by Martin Geluk on preaching. We need say no more as Martin himself has written an introduction.

The Place Of Preaching In The Church (Part 2)

In our previous article we began to consider some observations that arise from the passage Romans 10:14-15 and its context. The first one we looked at was: the aim of preaching is to have people call on the name of the Lord for salvation. We now come to a second observation. Preaching is the church’s most important calling.

For a relationship to exist between God and people, God has to speak and thus make Himself known. Man will never know God by what other people have to say about Him or by what they may have experienced about God. Truth is not with man, it is with God. The speaking of God has become known as the Word of God.  In paradise Adam and Eve had a true relationship with God because God spoke to them. After the fall into sin, God again spoke to men. Had that not happened then all of mankind would have remained forever in the spiritual darkness of sin amidst their superstitious beliefs and idolatry. However, up to the time of the Flood there were a number of generations who called on God because God had spoken to them.  Enoch and Noah, for example, believed in God because of His Word to them

After the Flood, God again came to men to speak to them. Abraham was called to follow God. The same with Isaac and Jacob. God spoke much to Moses.  In those days God spoke directly.  They heard His voice from heaven.  Or God’s Word came to them in dreams and visions. When the number of God’s people grew into the OT nation of Israel, then God appointed prophets and through them He communicated to His covenant people. What God said through His prophets was often written down as well and in time this became the Old Testament.

When in the fullness of time God sent His Son into the world then He spoke through Him. God made Himself most fully known through Christ. Christ was God’s last and final Word. In the OT times leading up to Christ’s coming God gave many messages about Christ through His prophets. Many of these prophecies were fulfilled by Christ and others will be fulfilled when He comes again. At the conclusion of His time on earth, before Christ returned to heaven, He commissioned His apostles to go to all nations and teach them to obey everything that He had commanded them. The apostles wrote all this down in letters to the churches and much of their writings became the NT.

Together the OT and NT are the Word of God written.  It is Scripture. The Scriptures are about Christ and God has said in Christ everything that He wanted to say. God warned that no one should add to His Word or take anything away from it. The Scriptures, therefore, are the only Word of God and the final Word of God.

The word of Christ is a very full gospel. It’s about God, about Christ, about His church and kingdom, about His second coming and much more. To be part of all this is to be of Christ, and to be of Christ is to live in and through Him. It is to be forgiven of sin, to receive the fullness of life, to have the Spirit of God in you, to have hope and purpose, to have righteousness, holiness and knowledge. In short, it is to have salvation. But to have it, said the apostle Paul, you have to call upon the name of the Lord. But to call on the Lord for salvation you have to believe in Christ. But to believe in Christ you need to hear Him first. And God’s Word is Christ speaking. But to hear Christ you need to have someone preach the Word. That someone has to be sent.

You can now understand why God commanded His prophets and apostles to proclaim the Word. It is the only way lost sinners can hear Christ speaking.  Paul commanded Timothy to: “Preach the Word.” [2 Tim. 4:2].  Paul himself said he was “… not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes… ” [Rom. 1:16].

Now all those who believe in Christ, all who have called on the name of the Lord and are continuing to do that, together they are the church. The church is not the leadership and the church is not the organisation. No, the church is made up of all those who belong to Christ. They know His word because it was through the Word that they got to know Christ and called on Him for salvation. The church, therefore, consists of the believers, of Christians. To the body of believers God has said: preach the Word. Do it all the time. At every opportunity. In season and out of season.

The church, therefore, came into being because of the Word spoken by God. The Lord knows from all eternity aII those whom He has chosen to save.  Through the preaching of the Word God’s elect are called and gathered into the church. But the church is not yet full. We will know when the church has reached its full number. It is when Christ returns. Until that happens the church must preach the Word in order for God to keep adding to the church all those whom He has appointed in His plan of salvation to hear of Christ and be saved.

But the church is not only about evangelism. Whilst it is most important that those elect of God, but not yet saved, get to hear the Word and are gathered into the church, it is just as important that with the same Word of God the church feeds its existing members with the spiritual food the Word provides.

The Word is sufficient to sustain the people of God in every way. The Word is the Christian’s life-blood. The believer cannot live without the Word.  It is his daily bread. Scripture says that the Word of God “… is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” [2Tim.3:16,17].

The church, therefore, must see the preaching of the Word as its most important mandate. We need the Word to help understand the purposes of God, to know the power of sin and death and how Christ the Saviour has broken these terrible powers.  We need the Word to realise the full implications of Christ’s death on the cross and His resurrection. We need the Word to understand the dark nature of the world and how to overcome the world in the power of the living Christ.  We need the Word to recognise the subtle schemings of the evil One and how to withstand him with the spiritual weapons Christ has provided.  We need the Word to develop a Christian mind.

The Christian and the church are nothing without that Word of God.  The Word guides us, trains us, protects us, keeps us, and holds us together. The Word does all that because it is God speaking to us in Christ. From the moment the sinner is born again by the Spirit of God and begins to have faith, and then right through the believer’s life until death, his life is and must always be dominated, controlled and influenced by the Word of God.

For all these reasons the Christian loves the Word of God and lives by it. It is in his mind and heart, and even when through sin he strays away from it, he can’t forget it altogether. Sooner or later, in one way or another, God will speak again to His wayward child and through His Word call that child back to repentance and service. The Word of God, says Heb. 4:12, “… is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.”

The Word of God, then, is everything to the church and to the individual believer. Through it God draws sinners to Himself for Him to save them from sin and death.  Then again through the Word God constantly feeds His people with the riches of Christ and the believer is enabled by God’s Spirit to live meaningfully and to the glory of God. And should the believer fall into temptation and be dragged into acts of disobedience that do not please God, then again the loving Father calls the sinner to return and break with things that can only do him great spiritual harm.

Like the shepherd is to his sheep, so Christ is to His people. They hear His voice and listen. It is God’s Word to them. He goes on ahead of them and they follow Him because they know His voice.  They will not follow a stranger because they do not know that voice.  In fact, they will run away from strangers because they do not recognise the things the stranger is saying and teaching. It is a false gospel to them. The Lord’s people will know how to pick the differences between the voices they hear. They will know it when they know the Word of God.

When the Lord’s people have allowed themselves to become unfamiliar with the Word of God, when they have stopped feeding on that Word of God, when they have not given the Word of God the attention and time that it deserves, it is then that they become unsure about the Word of God and cannot clearly hear the difference between it and the voice of strangers. It is then that they get into the wrong sheep pen. In fact, it is not a sheep pen at all, they are in the den of wolves.  Because of their lack of knowledge of the Word, they were not sufficiently able to recognise that the wolf came to them in sheep’s clothing.

Yes, there will always be false prophets and false gospels. And they will not present straight out lies but a mixture of truth and error. For that reason the Christian must spend much time with the Word of God.  If that Word has not infiltrated his life sufficiently, then he will be easy pickings for the false prophet and the false gospel.

But as we speak so much about the Word of God, then do not think of it as a mere book with lots of pages and difficult passages.  No, the Word of God is the living Word of Christ. When we hear the Word preached then we hear Christ speaking to us. The Word of God being the Word of Christ preached is what makes the Scriptures come alive. But the Word is alive only to those who are calling on the name of the Lord to be saved. The Scriptures are a dead letter to those still dead in trespasses and sins. But when the Spirit of God has made the dead sinner alive in Christ through the Word, it is then that His Word becomes living and active.

The church must continue to proclaim the Word to the spiritually dead. The Word of God has the power to bring life to the dead. Christ stood in front of Lazarus’ tomb and called: “Lazarus, come out”, and the dead man lived and came out!  So also will the speaking of Christ today, through the proclamation of the Word of God, bring spiritual life to the spiritual dead.

Next time we hope to say something about the folly of using human substitutes for God-ordained preaching.

M.P. Geluk. The Revd. Martin Geluk is Pastor of the Gosford Reformed Church (N.S.W.)

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