I’ve been asked recently what preaching is as opposed to teaching. My understanding is that the goal of preaching (as opposed to teaching) is not instruction but adoration. 1/7
Teaching may take place in a variety of settings but the context of preaching is within the church as the earthly body of Christ. Preaching takes place within the liturgy of the church’s worship. 2/7
Teaching provides things to learn and to do while preaching should leave us aghast and awed in the presence of God whose voice we have heard. Teaching must send us out to serve; preaching must lift us up to heaven! 3/7
Preaching properly belongs in the category of worship; not ‘worship’ reduced to the level of daily life, service and obedience (all of which are goods in themselves), but ‘worship’ as the contemplation and adoration of the Triune God. 4/7
Worship is the intrusion of the supernatural and eternal; the turning from the world towards God and the consciousness of being gathered before God’s throne with the holy angels in glorious display, the spirits of just people made perfect, and the Living God our Savior & Lord 5/7
In worship, we who are in Christ are seated with Him in the heavenly realm; joined to Him as He glorifies His Father in the Spirit; praying with Him “our Father..” - both His by nature and ours by adoption; interceding in Him for ourselves and others. 6/7
In worship, through our union with Christ, we are taken up into the divine Society of the Holy Trinity and are enabled by grace to hear words, not taught by human wisdom, but taught of God by the Spirit. 7/7
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If you believe parables have only one point; texts have only one big idea; that every text means only what it meant to it’s human author; you dislike systematic theology & think that moderns are the only ones who read texts well you might be a biblicist. Don’t be a biblicist. 1/5
By biblicist I mean that you may be like Arius or Socinius or you may be drinking at the fountain of 17th cent enlightenment; 18th cent rationalism; 19th cent liberalism or 20th cent neo-evangelicalism. Don’t be like Arius. 2/5
Consider how Jesus modeled the interpretation of the parables (eg the Sower); how the New Testament mines OT texts (like Ps. 2 talks of eternal generation & its demonstration at the resurrection; and John 1 echoes Proverbs 8) 3/5