Listening to Preaching

If you stop and think about it, the Sunday morning (or Saturday evening) gathering of the church is a strange thing: a motley gaggle of people come together in a room, sing aloud even though they (probably) haven’t imbibed any alcohol, listen to a man talk (and yell and whisper) for upwards of 40 to 45 minutes, and eat a small meal that they call the body and blood of Christ. 

Here at Horizons Resources, we’ve tried to call attention to why it is that Christians keep these odd habits week after week after week: we’ve written about why we intentionally gather together, why we sing aloud, and we’ve written a little bit about why we take communion. Now, we call your attention to the (arguably) most misunderstood part of the church gathering: the preaching. 

What is Preaching?

There are few venues left in the Western realm where people sit in a room and do nothing but listen to a person “monologue” for lengthy periods of time: we’ll watch a comedian for as long as they can make us laugh; we might listen to a 20-minute TED Talk if we’re interested in the topic; we might even endure a long political stump speech every two or four years if we really believe in the candidate. But there are not many places left where people congregate on a regular, weekly basis to simply sit and listen to one person talk. 

Of course, as it turns out, the church happens to be one of those places. But in the church, that block of time is not (normally) called a talk or a speech; it is called a sermon or a message, and the act of delivering it is called preaching. 

So then, what is preaching? And how is it distinct from other forms of communication?

As Jeremy Kimble writes, “Preaching is the public unfolding and proclamation of the truth of God’s word; it is interpreting, explaining, applying, and exulting over that word in the power of the Holy Spirit.” 

In other words, true preaching is rooted in the Scriptures (not just ideas floating in the preacher’s mind), and true preaching requires public proclamation. To preach is to speak as if speaking the very oracles of God (1 Peter 4:11). It is central to the worship of God’s people (2 Timothy 4:1-2). 

But for the purposes of this article, we will not be focusing primarily on what preaching is; rather, we’ll be drawing attention to how we can attentively listen to preaching, and how we can worship God as we hear his word proclaimed. 

Listening to Preaching

In Luke 8, Jesus shares the parable of the sower, which is all about hearing the word of God. Out of the four soils that Jesus describes, only one soil receives the seed and produces healthy, lasting fruit; and Jesus tells us that this good soil stands for those who hear the word with good and noble hearts. In other words, as God’s word is proclaimed, these people listen not merely with their ears, but with their hearts. 

So when it comes to gathering with the church and sitting under the preaching of the Scriptures, the first thing we ought to do is simply ask God to give us good and noble hearts to hear his word. This is a gift that he alone can give us, so we must be humble enough to seek him for it (Ezekiel 36:26-27, Luke 11:9). This might mean that we pause for a moment and pray before we enter the sanctuary; or maybe we pray for this together with our families on Saturday night before we go to bed. Whatever the case, we should come before our Father in heaven and ask him for the gift of good and noble hearts to hear his word.

When it comes to actually sitting in the service, we ought to receive the preaching of the word with humility and teachability (James 1:21). This does not mean that we shut down our brains or believe everything we hear “because the preacher said so”; it means that we give the preacher the benefit of the doubt, that we listen with an ear to hear God speak, and like the Bereans in Acts 17:11, that we receive the word with eagerness and examine the Scriptures for ourselves to see if the things we hear are true. A surefire way to come away from a sermon feeling as if you’ve not heard the Lord speak, is to assume that there’s nothing new for you to hear or learn. To paraphrase Augustine, we serve One who can make even that which is ever ancient into something that is ever new; God can speak in fresh ways to us even through a passage we’ve heard a thousand times before.

Hearing as Worship

Because the sermon is not primarily a lecture, but rather a heralding of good news, our response as we listen ought to fit the occasion. For example, if the doctor comes back to you with good news when you were expecting bad news, it is fitting to the occasion to rejoice. To be certain, the doctor will be communicating certain medical information to you in the process, but the primary thrust of sharing that information is to undergird the proclamation of the good news: you’re healthy; the cancer is gone; the procedure was successful! 

While this is not a perfect analogy, it does get us closer to what is actually happening when God’s word is preached. We’re not listening to merely good advice or good information; we’re listening to good news given to us by the Creator of the universe himself! To be certain, there’s good advice and good information in the words of Scripture, but the primary thrust of preaching is to proclaim the good news: if you believe in Jesus, you’ve been saved; your sin is forgiven; Christ has conquered once and for all! 

Thus, when we sit under preaching, we ought to view it not as separate from our praise and worship, but rather a continuation of it; our hearts ought to exult and sing as we hear God speak his honey-sweet words of truth to us. 

Taken all together, every moment of the corporate gathering of the church is meant to foster our worship of God — the encouragement of being with one another, the singing of psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, the shared prayers of confession and petition and thanksgiving, the taking of the bread and the cup, and yes, even the hearing of God’s word in preaching. 

So, when we congregate with our churches this weekend, may our hearts be lifted up each moment to the One who made us for himself. May we, with good and noble hearts, hear and receive God’s word — and may we rejoice in what we hear!