Why Biblical Preaching?

The Word of God as a Means of Grace

Before we come to the preaching of God's Word, for a moment I want to draw our attention to something that we maybe don't think about often. Those of you who are in our Sunday school hour, we heard about the reading and preaching of God's Word this morning and how that's an important part of our gathered worship.

As I was thinking about it, it did help me nonetheless to think about well why do we do this, what we're about to do? Why do we engage in this thing we call preaching? And I was telling the class this morning that in my office I have all kinds of random post-it notes of things that I like to remember while I'm working, but I have one that's actually printed up on a full sheet of paper because I always want to be reminded of it as I study.

It's above my two rather large monitors that I work with and it's a quotation from a catechism. So we just read a catechism in the beginning of our service. There's another catechism, we Reform people like catechisms.

There's another one called the Westmins, the larger catechism. Jamon55 asks, how does the Word of God become a means of grace? And the answer that the Reformers gave, I think it's insightful for us as we think about what happens in this moment as the Word of God is being preached.

The Spirit’s Work Through Reading and Preaching

So this is what the Reformers had to say. I pulled this up in the Sunday school class, but for those of you who maybe weren't there, let me share this with you. They said this, that the Spirit of God makes the reading, but especially the preaching of the Word, an effectual means, in other words, a powerful means, an effective means of enlightening, convincing, and humbling sinners, of driving them out of themselves and driving them unto Christ, of conforming them to His image and subduing them to His will, of strengthening them against temptations and corruptions, of building them up in grace and establishing their hearts in holiness and comfort through faith unto salvation.

That's why we do what we do each week here at Redeemer. We open the Bible, and yes, you hear me speaking to you, but if I'm speaking to you from God's Word, then in a sense, God is speaking to us in this moment, and He's speaking to us for the purpose of making us more like Jesus, of strengthening us in our faith, of empowering us for the works of service that He's called us to.

Why Personal Bible Reading Matters

None of that can happen without the Word of God, and our Reformation tradition rightly notes that yes, there is great value to be found in the personal reading of the Bible. That's one of the things that the Reformers and those who came before them lived and in some cases died for.

You have a precious gift in this book you call the Word of God. I encourage you, if you don't read it on your own every day, start the habit. But there is also something that we get in the preaching of the Word, which makes preaching important, and so that's why here at Redeemer, we make it a point to give extended time to the preaching of God's Word, to what Paul describes in 1 Timothy as teaching and exhortation.

Here's what God's Word says, and here's why it matters for your life.