The Primacy Of Preaching

The people of God need His Word. They need to read it, meditate on it for themselves and when we congregate to worship God who is "Holy, Holy, Holy" we need it to be preached to us. It is the way in which we behold the glory and majesty of God until we are bowing before Him in His presence. It proclaims the precious Gospel of Christ Jesus and directs our steps in how to walk in a manner worthy of the Gospel. We need the Word of God heralded to us.

I, as a pastor, need the Word proclaimed to me. I not only preach it but I must have it preached to me, too. When I happen to step foot in a church that I am visiting, I'm looking to be edified by the proclamation of Christ through His Word. If I am convicted in of sin in the process, so be it. If I am rebuked through the Word, so be it. If I walk away with warm fuzzies in my soul, so be it- just proclaim the Word of God to me. You don't have to get fancy with it and dress it up. You don't have to aim to make me "feel good" as I walk away. No, No, just cut it straight. Open up the Word and expound the text that is before you. Draw my attention to Christ my Lord. Just passionately preach the Word to me (us) and let the Spirit do His work.

If you're anything like me, perhaps, you may get discouraged as you are simply heralding the Sacred Text and as you are looking out into the congregation you may see apathy and looks of boredom on the faces of people. It becomes real tempting to want to "spice" up your sermon which ends up more at entertaining them. We are already in a problem of entertainment driven Christians. We don't need to add any more fuel to the problem. Sadly, those folks that thrive on and look forward to entertainment at church are severely malnourished Christians, if indeed they are Christians to begin with. They may be going to church for all the wrong reasons. It may be that they go to a service more for their own selfish desires rather than to give praise, honor and glory to God as a corporate body of believers. They don't need you to continue to malnourish them. They need you to nourish them through the Gospel of Christ. They need the nutrients of the whole counsel of God. Remember even as the Apostle Paul was preaching he had people fall asleep on him (Acts 20:9) as did many other faithful expositors of God's holy Word. Just proclaim it.

A note of caution- we must ever be examining our preaching. Our we being faithful to the text? Are we preaching the Word in a boring manner so as to impress upon the people of God that if it is not impacting us why should they take us seriously when we proclaim it? The problem may not always be with the people. Often, it lies with ourselves. Many times we proclaim the Word un-passionately. The Word needs to be preached with passion (not to be confused with animation or loudness). The body of Christ needs to see and know that we are rightly handling the Bible; we ourselves have been moved by the Word of God and take it seriously. We also need to be extremely thankful to our congregations for bearing with out folly's. They have put up with our pathetic sermons and other times our inaccuracies. But we must ever be striving to improve our preaching. It takes primacy in the gathering of God's people.

Here is some helpful encouragement from faithful expositor's of the Holy Writ-
Martyn Lloyd-Jones:

These men were pulpiteers rather than preachers. I mean they were men who could  occupy a pulpit and dominate it, and dominate the people. They were professionals. There was a good deal of the element of showmanship in them, and they were experts at handling congregations and playing on their emotions. in the end they could do almost what they liked with them... That is a most important point, and i think it has very real relevance to this point about the pernicious influence of pulpiteerism upon true preaching. You see, the from became more important that the substance, the oratory and the eloquence became things in and of themselves, and ultimately preaching became a form of entertainment. The Truth was noticed, they paid a passing respect to it, but the great thing was the form. I believe we are living in an age which is experiencing a reaction to that. And this has been continued in the present century when there has often been a form of popular preaching, in evangelism particularly, that has brought true preaching into disrepute because of a lack of substance and too much attention being paid to the from and to the presentation. It degenerates ultimately into what I have described as professionalism , not to say showmanship.*  

John Stott:

 Preaching is indispensable to Christianity. Without preaching a necessary part of its authenticity has been lost. For Christianity is, in its very essence, a religion of the Word of God. No attempt to understand Christianity can succeed which overlooks or denies the truth that the living God has taken the initiative to reveal himself savingly to fallen humanity ; or that his self-revelation has been given by the most straightforward means of communication known to us, namely by a word and words; or that he calls upon those who have heard his Word to speak it to others. First, God spoke through the prophets, interpreting to them the significance of his actions in the history of Israel, and simultaneously instructing them to convey his message to his people either by speech or by writing or both. Next, and supremely, he spoke in his Son, his ‘Word ... made flesh’, and in his Word’s words, whether spoken directly or through his apostles. Thirdly, he speaks through his Spirit, who himself bears witness to Christ and to Scripture, and makes both living to the people of God today. This Trinitarian statement of a speaking Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and so of a Word of God that is scriptural, incarnate and contemporary, is fundamental to the Christian religion. And it is God’s speech which makes our speech necessary. We must speak what he has spoken. Hence the paramount obligation to preach.*

Brian Borgman:

A biblical theology of preaching must begin and end with God (Rom. 11:36). His glory is the greatest end of preaching. Cotton Mather said, 'The great design and intention of the office of a Christian preacher is to restore the throne and dominion of God in the souls of men.' The man of God must be convinced that biblical preaching is ordained by God as His appointed means of glorifying Himself through saving sinners and building up the saints (1 Cor. 1:17-2:5). 'God uses contemporary preaching to bring His salvation to people today, to build His church, to bring in His Kingdom. In short, contemporary biblical preaching is nothing less than a redemptive event'. 

God-owned biblical preaching, which reaches people with the truth can be pictured as a convergence of two forces, one from above, one from underneath. The force from above is the unction of the Spirit, the felt power of the truth, which comes mightily on the man of God when preaching. the force erupting from underneath is the man of God's own biblical theology of preaching, which always is beneath him , but in the act of preaching, combined with the force from above, serves to propel the man of God in such a way that preaching becomes 'truth on fire'. Without a sufficient theology of preaching, the pastor's preaching ministry will lack power! He must know what he is there to do.* 

Charles Spurgeon:

 Sermons should have real teaching in them, and their doctrine should be solid, substantial, and abundant. We do not enter the pulpit to talk for talk’s sake; we have instructions to convey important to the last degree, and we cannot afford to utter pretty nothings. Our range of subjects is all but boundless, and we cannot, therefore, be excused if our discourses are threadbare and devoid of substance. If we speak as ambassadors for God, we need never complain of want of matter, for our message is full to overflowing. The entire gospel must be presented from the pulpit; the whole faith once delivered to the saints must be proclaimed by us. The truth as it is in Jesus must be instructively declared, so that the people may not merely hear, but know, the joyful sound. We serve not at the altar of “the unknown God,” but we speak to the worshipers of him of whom it is written, “they that know thy name will put their trust in thee.” To divide a sermon well may be a very useful art, but how if there is nothing to divide? A mere division maker is like an excellent carver with an empty dish before him. To be able to deliver an exordium which shall be appropriate and attractive, to be at ease in speaking with propriety during the time allotted for the discourse, and to wind up with a respectable peroration, may appear to mere religious performers to be all that is requisite; but the true minister of Christ knows that the true value of a sermon must lie, not in its fashion and manner, but in the truth which it contains. Nothing can compensate for the absence of teaching; all the rhetoric in the world is but as chaff to the wheat in contrast to the gospel of our salvation. However beautiful the sower’s basket, it is a miserable mockery if it be without seed. The grandest discourse ever delivered is an ostentatious failure if the doctrine of the grace of God be absent from it; it sweeps over men’s heads like a cloud, but it distributes no rain upon the thirsty earth; and therefore the remembrance of it to souls taught wisdom by an experience of pressing need is one of disappointment, or worse. A man’s style may be as fascinating as that of the authoress of whom one said, “that she 

should write with a crystal pen dipped in dew upon silver paper, and use for pounce the dust of a butterfly’s wing”; but to an audience whose souls are in instant jeopardy, what will mere elegance be but “altogether lighter than vanity”? Horses are not to be judged by their bells or their trappings, but by limb and bone and blood; and sermons, when criticized by judicious hearers, are largely measured by the amount of gospel truth and force of gospel spirit which they contain. Brethren, weigh your sermons. Do not retail them by the yard, but deal them out by the pound. Set no store by the quantity of words which you utter, but strive to be esteemed for the quality of your matter. It is foolish to be lavish in words and niggardly in truth. He must be very destitute of wit who would be pleased to hear himself described after the manner of the world’s great poet, who says, “Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing, more than any man in all Venice: his reasons are as two grains of wheat hidden in two bushels of chaff; you shall seek all day ere you find them; and when you have them they are not worth the search.”*

"preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry" (2 Ti 4:1–5). Soli Deo Gloria!

For His Glory,
Fernando

*Lloyd-Jones, Martyn. Preaching and Preachers (Grand Rapids Michigan: Zondervan, 1971), p. 14-15

*Stott, John R. W. (1994-01-01). Between Two Worlds: The Challenge of Preaching Today (p. 15). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. Kindle Edition.

*Borman, Brian. My Heart for Thy Cause: Albert N. Martin's Theology of Preaching ( Great Britain: Mentor, 2002), p. 127-128

*Spurgeon, C. H. (1905-07-02). Lectures to My Students (pp. 73-74). Hendrickson Publishers. Kindle Edition.