In Sovereign Grace we are committed to the primacy of preaching in building the local church. And within this conviction is an awareness of the gravity of the preaching event.

At a recent conference on preaching, held at our Pastors College, Jeff Purswell (dean of the Pastors College) eloquently and passionately made this point. This excerpt (transcribed and posted below) will challenge all men called to preach and make a difference in our souls as we stand behind the sacred desk this Sunday and speak on behalf of God.

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Preaching is incarnational, meaning it calls for the presence of human personality. This sets preaching apart from other modes of communication. This sets preaching apart from personal Bible reading. That is why we don’t just hand out Bibles and read from Scripture on a Sunday morning. Why not? Because there is more going on in the preaching moment than just a delivery of information.

One of the things that enters here is biblical anthropology. We are people created in the image of God. We were created to know God, created to reflect God, and endowed with certain characteristics from God. And so we are created to know him.

Just as in the ancient Near East a king, in vast provinces he cannot travel to, would set up huge statues of himself which represented his presence and authority, in the same way God has set up an image of himself to represent and reflect himself. And that is man. And this impacts the way God communicates, as he speaks through divinely appointed messengers. After man was ejected from the Garden, God has communicated to his people by mediating his word through someone. Even the Scriptures were mediated from God through someone.

God didn’t just deliver the Israelites. God could have just wiped out the Egyptians and delivered Israel. No. He sent a messenger to reveal God to him. “Tell him I AM has sent you.” And then after delivering them he appointed this messenger to not only give them his law, but then to interpret that law. So Deuteronomy is basically comprised of three sermons of Moses explicating this law. And then, of course, throughout the rest of the Old Testament we read the prophets. The most accurate definition of a prophet is one who speaks God’s words. “I will put my words in his mouth” (Deuteronomy 18:18). That is the definition of a prophet.

And then, of course, the ultimate revelation is through the person of God’s Son, Jesus Christ. He is a particular kind of revelation, a different kind of revelation, not just one prophet through a line of other prophets, but a qualitatively different revelation (Hebrews 1:1–2). And then the apostles stand in that same succession. Now preachers stand in that same succession.

Listen to this quote from a classic essay on preaching by J.I. Packer in The Preacher and Preaching. Packer writes,

God’s standard way of securing and maintaining His person-to-person communication with us His human creatures is through the agency of persons whom He sends to us as His messengers.…Such were the prophets and apostles, and such supremely was Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son.…That is the succession in which preachers today are called to stand.

It’s sobering that this is “the succession in which preachers today are called to stand.” The moment of preaching is not simply one in which you—by virtue of your job or by virtue of the nameplate on your office door—get to stand up and share some thoughts. No. You are not sharing thoughts. You are not Jay Leno. You are not a talking head. You are standing in the very stead of God.

Oh, that is a frightening thing.

It’s not only a divine message you are bringing, but you are meant to be a suitable vessel for that message, embodying its truth, exemplifying an appropriate response to its claims, impassioned by the weight of the message and the urgency of the moment.

-Jeff Purswell, address from February 14, 2008