Though the setting in
which a preacher stands behind a pulpit while the audience listens would be
foreign to the original followers of Jesus, and wouldn’t be recognizable to
them as “church,” which, for them, took place at a community meal, it is
possible to generalize and say that the preacher preaches (the teacher teaches,
or the prophet prophesies, or the community leader exhorts and encourages) so
that the Creator God may be made known.
This fact has always
been true of the church of Christ, even if it was not done in what has become
the most familiar form for most of the believing community the world over.
The preacher preaches so that his hearers can learn about the covenant God and
know more about that God. Knowledge about the Creator God is transmitted
so that those that made in the image of that God, who are called to be covenant
bearers, might be able to correctly and effectively bear that image and
covenant, so that they might be a blessing to all peoples, and that their God
may receive the glory that is due to Him for His mighty acts.
While the Creator God
is acknowledged through praises, knowledge of Him is conveyed through the
preaching of the Scriptures (primarily the message of the Gospel, rooted as it
is in the story of the covenant people and the narrative of the Creator’s
interaction with His creation), which convey information about the Creator, His
character, His means, His purposes, and His goals. The primary subject of
proclamation in the time and places of regular Christian gatherings for worship
must be the Creator God as revealed in the narrative of Scripture, and the
primary activity (it seems) must be proclamation.
Yes, the primary
activity that must take place at these regular appointments must be preaching
and teaching (communicating knowledge of the Creator God for the purpose of
rightly being His divine image-bearers and representatives, with an
understanding rooted in the historical recollections of the Creator God’s
activity in His world, so that kingdom work might be properly performed), for
it is in the mysteriously transformative proclamation of the Gospel that the
power of the Resurrection is sent forth, and it is in this that knowledge is
seated.
This instruction in
knowledge, which has and always will require great discipline and diligence, is
of paramount importance, and should not only inspire the hearers to a constant
desire to learn more about their God, but also to live lives of praise to that God.
Also of paramount importance is the realization that living this life of praise
will not result in a withdrawal from the world around them into a self-imposed
and ungodly exile that has the believer erecting their own temples.
If learning more
about the God of Scripture, as revealed in the person of Jesus of Nazareth,
causes the hearer to retreat from the world in separation, isolation, and
condemnation fostered by an “us versus them” mentality, then that preaching has
gone woefully astray from that which is modeled by Jesus, and springs not from
a diligent study of Scriptures so as to learn more about the Creator God, but
from a subjective and self-satisfying interpretation of Scripture designed for
little more than the gaining of personal control over the lives of the hearers
and the all too familiar pursuit of power.
Instead, living a
life of praise will result in the erection of a multiplicity of tabernacles,
placed within a fallen world as a symbol of constant exodus, in which, like the
one claimed as Lord, the believer goes out to show forth the blessings of the
Creator God’s kingdom to “tax collectors and sinners,” to the sick, to the
thirsty, to the hungry, to those lacking clothes, to those in prison, and to
the places where pain and evil are corrupting the covenant God’s creation and
thwarting the advance of His kingdom.
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