In December of 2021 I read through the New Testament at least twice. I was just reading and reading and reading; it was providing for me the spiritual nourishment my soul needed. As I was reading I was looking for what God wants out of His church. On Sunday January 9, 2022 I gave the church four points for where our church needs to head. The first one being that preaching and teaching the whole counsel of the Word of God must remain our absolute highest aim. In this blog I want to provide three reasons for why.
Reason #1: God is glorified through the preaching of His Word.
The glory of God is the goal to everything God does, including giving us His Word. In Isaiah 55:10-11 the prophet Isaiah said, “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” The purpose for which God sent his Word to accomplish is to make himself known to the world. That is the purpose for preaching and teaching God’s Word: to bring glory to God by making him known through His written Word. That is why every sermon, every Bible study, and every Sunday School class must be God-centered not man-centered, because the Bible is not about man, it’s about God. If God is not at the center of our sermons, our Bible studies, or even our Sunday School classes, we are not using God’s Word correctly.
Reason #2: Preaching and teaching God’s Word will remain our highest aim because it is the means for which sinners are saved.
If we are going to see sinners truly saved and transformed, God’s Word must be heralded. Romans 10:13-14 says, “For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?” Then in Romans 9:17 we read, “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” So, preaching and teaching God’s Word will remain our highest aim because without hearing the Word of God sinners will not know they are in need of saving.
Reason #3: Preaching and teaching God’s Word will remain our highest aim because it is the means through which saved people spiritually mature in Christ Jesus.
Ephesians 4:11-14 says, “And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.” The point of this passage is God has given the church apostles, prophets, evangelists, preachers, and teachers to teach God’s Word to saved people so that believers will be united and mature in the faith, so that they will not be deceived by false teaching, which continues to plague the church today.
In summary, through the preaching and teaching of the Word of God: God is glorified, sinners are saved, unity is achieved in the church, and disciples are matured in the their faith. All of these are important. These are why God gave us His Word in written form. We must make much of it. If any church is to accomplish any of these, the proclamation of sound doctrine based on the Word of God must be a supreme goal.