My working definition of preaching expands on definitions given by Phillips Brooks1 and Andrew Blackwood2 and also considers our understanding of worship.

Preaching is God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—communicating His truth in our world to people in the pews through human instruments in order to change their thinking, bridle their emotions, and alter their wills for the purpose of converting sinners, sanctifying saints, and preparing people for heaven.

I draw a distinction between preaching and the sermon. The sermon is the material you preach. Preaching is the activity, the work of communicating the material. As we shall see, you must prepare your sermons for oral communication.

My working definition also relates the proximate objective for preaching. You preach, or you ought to preach, to change thinking, bridle emotions, and alter wills. But this is not your final objective. Your ultimate purpose is converting sinners, sanctifying saints, and preparing people for heaven. Let’s take a brief look at each of these parts of the definition.

Preaching is an activity in which the Triune God is communicating. Scripture often characterizes preaching as the Word of God. “For this reason we also constantly thank God that when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God” (1 Thess. 2:13; see Acts 13:5; 1 Pet. 1:23, 25).

We do not say our preaching is infallible or inerrant. We do not equate preaching and Scripture. So how can we characterize preaching as the word of God?…Preaching is styled the word of God when it is (1) agreeable to Scripture and (2) sets forth the will of God, (3) for the glory of God, (4) in the power of God.

Romans 10:14 validates this: “How will they believe Him3 whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher?” Commenting on this text, John Murray observes, “A striking feature of this clause is that Christ is represented as being heard in the gospel when proclaimed by sent messengers. The implication is that Christ speaks in the gospel proclamation.”4 Preaching is God communicating His truth.

This does not mean preachers or teachers have the prerogative of telling people something like, “If you do not heed my preaching you are disobedient to Christ.” This is an all too arrogant stand. Preachers are not organs of special revelation. People in the congregation do not owe us the same obedience they owe to God speaking in Scripture. The people do not hear the voice of Christ simply because their pastor speaks to them.

Acts 16:14 gives us perspective: “A woman named Lydia, from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple fabrics, a worshiper of God, was listening; and the Lord opened her heart to respond to the things spoken by Paul.” Lydia was listening to Paul as he spoke to a little group gathered by the riverside in Philippi. Lydia was a businesswoman and, it also appears, a proselyte to the Jewish faith. As she sat listening to Paul, the Lord Jesus Christ, sitting in heaven, extended His hand of grace and opened Lydia’s heart. That is, the Lord “caused” her “to be born again” (1 Pet. 1:3). As a result, Lydia responded positively to Paul’s preaching. Christ drew her to Himself (John 12:32). Christ puts it this way, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me” (John 10:27).

The dynamic is not one of Christ reaching through the minister preaching to the person listening. Rather, the dynamic is one of men faithfully preaching the truth of Scripture and of Christ reaching directly from heaven into the hearts of listeners to open their hearts and illumine their minds so that they respond positively to God’s truth in preaching. In this way, people in the congregation hear the voice of the Savior and follow Him. In this way, God communicates with people in the congregation. This is part of the divine dynamic of worship. In this process, God is in the business of communicating His truth. Those who sit under the preaching of the Word of God and whose hearts God opens to receive this Word, receive the truth. “Since you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart” (1 Pet. 1:22, emphasis added). Proper response to the truth and receipt of the truth come as a result of God’s work in opening the heart (Acts 16:14). The truth about which we are speaking is a distillation of what a Scripture text says in the form of a single statement. This gospel truth is the point of the passage. It is the exegetical point of the passage. The pastor communicates and applies this biblical truth to the congregation. “An idea fit for a sermon is more than a mental concept, a thought of the preacher. It is a word of truth from God to every person who will hear.”5

Preaching is God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—communicating His truth in our world. The truth God is communicating comes from the Bible. As this is the case, it also comes out of the world of the Bible. The world of the Bible is a premodern world. The premodern world is the world before books as we know them today and publishing as we understand it today. The modern world began after the introduction of printing and the printing press.6

We do not live in the premodern world of the Bible, nor do we live in the modern world. We now live in a postmodern world. “Most scholars associate the postmodern shift with the counterculture of the 1960s.”7

In literature, postmodernism amounts to denial of the fixity of any text, of the authority of the author over the interpreter, of any canon that privileges great books over lesser ones. In philosophy, it is the denial of the fixity of language, of any correspondence between language and reality—indeed, of any essential reality and thus of any proximate truth about reality. In law (in America, at any rate), it is a denial of the fixity of the Constitution, of the authority of the founders of the Constitution, and of the legitimacy of law itself, which is regarded as nothing more than an instrument of power. In history, it is a denial of the fixity of the past, of the reality of the past apart from what the historian chooses to make of it, and thus of any objective truth about the past.8

In discussing these matters in class, an older pastor confessed, “When I’m preaching and look out at the congregation, some of the young people look as though they are in a different world.” Yes, and these young people are looking at you and listening to you and they are asking, “What planet are you from?” We must communicate the truth of Scripture in ways people in the postmodern world will understand and grasp. The truth must be brought from the world of the Bible into this present postmodern world.

But this is not enough. Preaching requires an additional step. Preaching is God communicating His truth in our world to people in the pews. We must bring God’s truth from the pages of the Bible into our postmodern world and then into the personal world of men and women, young people, and boys and girls to whom we speak.

Note again the words of the Apostle Peter: “Since you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart, for you have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and enduring word of God” (1 Pet. 1:22–23, emphasis added). Peter is personal and forceful. “The gospel is not broadcast on the impersonal air, but is personally addressed to persons.”9

Audience adaptation is therefore essential. I may preach the substance of one text to two different audiences on two different occasions. One audience may be the students, staff, and faculty of the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary. This audience is relatively small in number, more mature, perhaps more serious, mostly male, and mostly individuals looking forward to pastoral work in the church.

A second audience may be at a Geneva College chapel. This audience is relatively large, perhaps 1,500. And many of these undergraduate students may have an aversion to mandatory chapels. The students are younger, likely antiauthoritarian, and may be keyed in on iPods, computer games, rap music, teenage temptations, and the like.

The truth of God, however, remains the same. Presentation, style, illustrations, and applications must change to connect the truth with the audience. Preaching involves communication of the truth to people in the pews—or in the bleachers, as the case may be. When I presented this definition of preaching in class for the first time, a student asked, “Where is the preacher?” Good question. When Peter introduces his letter, he introduces himself, “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 1:1). So it is with Paul, “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus” (2 Cor. 1:1; Eph. 1:1; 1 Tim. 1:1; 2 Tim. 1:1; see Gal. 1:1; Col. 1:1). God’s truth comes to us through Spirit-inspired human instruments. In preaching and teaching, God also communicates His truth through human instruments. I therefore gladly add this phrase, through human instruments.

However, judging by his tone, I believe my student exaggerates the importance of the minister. In preaching and teaching, the minister is a very human instrument simply delivering a message. “In this form of communication, the Sender of the message comes first in importance, and after him the substance of the message. Next in importance are the people to whom the message is addressed. The preacher comes fourth in importance.”10

God’s purposes in preaching apply to the human instrument as much as they apply to the people in the pews. You must conform your thinking to God’s truth, and I must conform my thinking to God’s truth as it applies to our own personal worlds. We must do so before we apply God’s truth to the personal worlds of the people.

We now move to the proximate purposes for the preaching we have been discussing. Preaching is God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—communicating His truth in our world to people in the pews through human instruments in order to change their thinking, bridle their emotions, and alter their wills. To speak of the thinking, emotions, and will is to speak of the heart.

“Never in the Bible is the word heart set over against the head or the intellectual processes. That is a modern, Western idea of the heart, introduced from the outside.”11 In the Bible, the heart includes all three—the mind, the emotions, and the will. This is true in the Hebrew Old Testament. The heart involves “the inner man … comprehending mind, affections, and will.”12 This is true in the Greek New Testament where the heart is the “center and source of the whole inner life, with its thinking, feeling, and volition, in the case of natural man as well as the redeemed man.”13

Westminster Shorter Catechism 31 defines effectual calling in similar terms. “Effectual calling is the work of God’s Spirit, whereby, convincing us of our sin and misery, enlightening our minds in the knowledge of Christ, and renewing our wills, he doth persuade and enable us to embrace Jesus Christ, freely offered to us in the gospel.”

First, illumination of the mind is essential to biblical understanding. “For God, who said, ‘Light shall shine out of darkness,’ is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6). We see the face of Christ in Scripture. We must preach and teach Christ as God reveals Him in Scripture. God, the Creator, shines in the heart. To what end? We may translate this text, for the illumination of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.14

Second, conviction relates to the emotions. Those hearing Peter’s preaching on the Day of Pentecost “were pierced to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, ‘Brethren, what shall we do?’” (Acts 2:37). Convicted of the truth of the resurrection, “Thomas answered and said to Him, ‘My Lord and my God!’” (John 20:28).

Third, Ezekiel 36:26–27 is the proof text for “renewing our wills” in Westminster Shorter Catechism 31: “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.”15 In other words, real change of heart comes with an altering of the will.

“There is an important balance to be pursued here—the balance of ministering to the understanding, affections and will.”16 Pastors and teachers may emphasize ministry to the mind. Some may spotlight the emotions; still others may stress decisions. But a balance is missing. “It is possible to instruct, yet fail to nourish those to whom we preach. It is possible to address the mind, but to do so with little concern to see the conscience, the heart, and the affections reached and cleansed, the will redirected, and the whole person transformed through a renewed mind.”17

“Since you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart, for you have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and enduring word of God” (1 Pet. 1:22–23). We enter the heart through the mind. The message is truth. God is in the business of training and renewing minds (Rom. 12:2). God tempers our feelings and emotions to bring them into conformity to His will (John 16:8). God purifies the soul. God bends the will to Himself (1 Pet. 1:3). He produces love (1 Tim. 1:5). He does all of this using the instrumentality of the Word (1 Pet. 1:23, 25). As a preacher or teacher, you must make God’s objectives your objectives.

This brings us to the ultimate purposes for proclaiming the Word of God.…Preaching is the instrument leading to new birth and subsequent conversion. Converted men and women “are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Pet. 1:5). In other words, they undergo the process of sanctification. They grow in faith. Hence this exhortation. “Since you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart” (1 Pet. 1:22). All of this is a preparation for heaven. You are converted and sanctified in order “to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you (1 Pet. 1:4). Again, all this takes place by hearing God’s truth. “And this is the word which was preached to you” (1 Pet. 1:25).

T. H. L. Parker relates Calvin’s purpose for preaching: “The quintessence of the teaching ‘declared to us daily’ is that the hidden God reveals himself and that men are thereby brought out of darkness into light.”18 As Steven Lawson puts it, “In short, he preached for changed lives.”19

Parker notes that Calvin’s overall purpose in preaching is edification. “And then, when a man will be a preacher, it is not just a question of making a sermon, but in general and in particular it is necessary for him to know that it is to proclaim the Word of God in order to edify, so that the Word may be profitable.”20 Here, edification refers to both conversion and sanctification.21 Finally, Parker adds, “The teaching of the sermons is eschatological, not in the sense that at certain points, depending on the text, heaven and eternal life are mentioned, but that everything is viewed in the light of the eternal inheritance.”22 And so the great Reformer, following Scripture, has as his purpose for preaching converting sinners, sanctifying saints, and preparing people for heaven.

Stephen Marshall drafted the section on preaching in Westminster’s Directory for the Public Worship of God. He declares, “The preaching of the Word is the Scepter of Christ’s Kingdom, the glory of a Nation, the Chariot upon which life and salvation comes riding.”23… Psalm 45:3-5 speaks of Christ in these same terms: “Gird Your sword on Your thigh, O Mighty One, in Your splendor and Your majesty! And in Your majesty ride on victoriously, for the cause of truth and meekness and righteousness; let Your right hand teach You awesome things. Your arrows are sharp; the peoples fall under You; Your arrows are in the heart of the King’s enemies.”

And how does Jesus Christ ride forth shooting gospel arrows into the hearts of men and women? He does so in preaching carried out in His gracious presence in worship. Preaching is God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—communicating His truth in our world to people in the pew through human instruments in order to change their thinking, bridle their emotions, and alter their wills for the purpose of converting sinners, sanctifying saints, and preparing people for heaven.

Endnotes

1 Philips Brooks, Lectures on Preaching (New York: Seabury, 1964), 5.

2 Ibid., 8

3 William Gouge, Commentary on Hebrews (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1980), 1072.

4 Ibid., pp. 1072–1073.

5 The NASB reads “in Him.” However, “[t]here is no need to insert the preposition ‘in’ before ‘him’” according to John Murray, The Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1973), 2:58, n. 16. Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by the Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

6 Murray, Epistle to the Romans, 58.

7 H. Grady Davis, Design for Preaching (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1958), 188.

8 Richard Pratt, Class Lecture, Wednesday, July 15, 1993, Reformed Theological Seminary, Orlando, Fla.

9 Gene Edward Veith, Postmodern Times (Wheaton: Crossway, 1994), 40.

10 Gertude Himmelfarb, Looking into the Abyss (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), 133.

11 Davis, Design for Preaching, 110, emphasis added.

12 R.C. Sproul, “The Teaching Preacher,” Feed My Sheep: A Passionate Plea for Preaching (Orlando: Reformation Trust, 2008)], 79.

13 Jay Adams, “Preaching to the Heart,” The Trinity Review (September/October 1984): 2.

14 William Gesenius, A Hebrew English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), 524.

15 William F. Arndt and Wilbur Gingrich, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), 404.

16 Sinclair B. Ferguson, “Preaching to the Heart,” Feed My Sheep, 103.

17 The Greek reads: projz fwtismojn thz gnwjsewz, for the purpose of the illumination of the knowledge.

18 Italics are in the prooftext as rendered in Westminster Confession of Faith (Glasgow: Free Presbyterian Publications, 1997), 296.

19 Ferguson, Feed My Sheep, 107.

20 Ibid.

21 T.H.L. Parker, Calvin’s Preaching (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992), 101.

22 Steven L. Lawson, The Expository Genius of John Calvin (Orlando: Reformation Trust, 2007), 105.

23 Parker, Calvin’s Preaching, 47. Italics in Parker.

This article is excerpted from chapter 2 of So Pastor, What’s Your Point? The material is copyright © 2010 The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals (www. alliancenet.org) and is used by permission.