REFORMED WITNESS
Volume XV, June 2009, Number 6
(Preaching Is) The Crux of the Matter
By Prof. Robert D. Decker
From the May 15, 1990, issue of The Standard Bearer
See more articles by this author
Also in this issue: Preaching on the Heidelberg Catechism - by Rev. Marvin Kamps
What makes a church the church? To what church ought I belong? What should I look for in a church? Which considerations are essential and which are not? Is the worship style important? Ought I be a member of that downtown church which offers a ("high church") structured and very formal worship? Or should I be a member of that large church which features a much less formal worship style bordering on the charismatic? Ought I join the church that offers a wide range of "ministries" and support groups to singles, divorced persons, youth, et. al.? Or ought I be a member of that church which places a high priority on the preaching of the Word, the church that makes preaching the center of its worship and insists that the preacher proclaim the riches of the truth of the inspired, infallible, holy Scriptures? What is the crux of the matter in determining my church membership?
If the church must worship God as He has commanded in His Word, and she must, then all the elements in the worship (the singing, the reading of the Law, confession of faith, prayers, offerings, preaching) must be in harmony with the will of God revealed in Holy Scripture. But what is the one thing that really matters? What is it that distinguishes the true church from those churches which are apostatizing or which have become completely false? What is the crux of the matter?
The answer is, according to the Reformed Confessions, that the church is marked by the preaching of the Word, the proper administration of the sacraments, and the exercise of Christian discipline (cf. The Belgic Confession, Art. XXIX). Of these three marks of the true church preaching is the chief. Preaching is the chief mark of the church because preaching is the chief means of grace. Preaching is the means which God, the Holy Spirit, uses to work His grace in the hearts of His people and to preserve them to everlasting life and glory. The Belgic Confession teaches that faith is wrought in man by the hearing of the Word of God (Art. XXIV), and that there must be ministers to preach the Word... that by these means the true religion may be preserved (Art. XXX). The Heidelberg Catechism teaches that the Son of God gathers His elect out of the world by means of His Spirit and Word (q. 54). The Catechism also insists that the Holy Spirit works faith by the preaching of the gospel (q. 65). Preaching is one of the keys by which the Kingdom is opened to believers and shut to unbelievers (q. 83, 84). Images are not to be tolerated in the churches as books to the laity, The Catechism explains, because we must not pretend to be wiser than God Who will have His people taught not by dumb images but by the lively preaching of His Word (q. 98). The Canons of Dordrecht teach that the promise and command of the gospel ought to be published and declared to all nations and persons promiscuously to whom God out of His good pleasure sends the gospel (Art. II, 5). The Canons also declare that just as God uses means to prolong and support our natural life, so God uses means to nourish and support our spiritual life; the means God uses are the admonitions of the preaching of the gospel (Arts. III, IV; 17).
The Reformed Confessions are true to the Scriptures on this matter. The inspired Apostle writes to the church at Ephesus:
And he (the crucified, risen, exalted Christ) gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ... that we... may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ. (Ephesians 4:11-16)
This passage teaches that Christ gave pastors and teachers to the church to make the saints perfect, complete. The people of God through the work of the ministry are edified, i.e., built up into the body of Jesus Christ. This is what preaching accomplishes.
In the marvelous tenth chapter of the Gospel According to John Jesus reveals Himself as the Good Shepherd, Who lays down His life and takes it up again for His sheep, and Who gathers the sheep into one fold under Himself as the one Shepherd. What distinguishes the sheep of Jesus from all unbelievers is the fact that the sheep hear Jesus' voice, are known of Him, and follow Him (John 10:14-30).
The question is, how do the sheep hear the voice of Jesus? How do they hear His voice today? The answer is found in Romans 10:13-15 where we read:
For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, how beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things!
This passage teaches that in order to be saved one must call upon the name of the Lord. In order to call upon the name of the Lord one must believe on Him, and in order to believe on the Lord one must hear the Lord. In order to hear the Lord one must have a preacher who is sent. This means that we hear the voice of Jesus by means of a preacher called, qualified, ordained by Christ through the church. This is the means God chooses to use to work faith in the hearts of His people enabling them to call upon His name and be saved. This is utterly crucial, for it means that without preaching there can be no believing, and without believing there can be no calling upon the name of the Lord, and without calling upon the name of the Lord there can be no salvation.
Standing firmly on the rock of Holy Scripture the Reformed tradition maintains, therefore, that preaching is the chief means by which God works His grace in the hearts of His elect in Christ and preserves them to everlasting life and glory. If we as Protestant Reformed Churches are to continue to be a Confessionally Reformed Church it is absolutely necessary that we hold fast to this biblical truth. Preaching is not merely one man addressing all the others as some maintain. Preaching is much more than a lecture on some doctrine of the Bible. Preaching is that unique, mysterious miracle by which God uses a sinful, weak man in the way of expounding Holy Scripture to "save them that believe!" By means of preaching, the sheep of Christ hear His voice; and hearing His voice they know and follow the Good Shepherd into life eternal. It is crucial that we maintain this truth by the grace of God. Preaching must remain central in our worship; it must be the main element around which everything in the worship revolves.
As to its content this means that preaching must declare and proclaim nothing less than and nothing more than the Word of God, and, because this is true, preaching must be exegetical or expository. Preaching must explain the plain, simple, yet utterly profound meaning of the Word of God as that Word applies to every sphere of human life and meets every need of the child of God.
Thus, because preaching is the chief means of grace, it is the chief mark of the church.
This is the crux of the matter! I must be a member of that church which preaches the Word of God. Then I shall be hearing "Christ crucified" (I Corinthians 1:23). This explains our choice of the word "crux." It is derived from the Latin word for cross. In the cross of Jesus Christ is all of our salvation. Apart from the cross of Jesus Christ we are lost. This means that we must be and remain members of that church which faithfully proclaims nothing less or more than Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
How clearly the Scriptures speak to this! In response to the schism and party strife in Corinth Paul stressed that not baptism but preaching is the chief means of grace. Christ did not send me to baptize, writes Paul, but to preach Christ crucified. The reason for this is that preaching is: "Christ, the power and wisdom of God" and: "... it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe" (I Corinthians 1:17-25).
For this reason no one has the right to separate himself from that church which faithfully preaches the Word (The Belgic Confession Art. XXIX).
Preaching is the crux of the matter!
Preaching on the Heidelberg Catechism
By Rev. Marvin Kamps
From the May 15, 1990 issue of The Standard Bearer
Catechism preaching has a long and blessed history in the Reformed community of churches. For nearly five hundred years Reformed preachers have fulfilled their ecclesiastical responsibility to preach the Word of God as set forth in the rich confession of these churches throughout the world. It is without a doubt true that these churches have remained faithful to the truth of God's Word in the measure that they have also been faithful to her task to preach faithfully the catechism each Lord's Day. Centuries ago the great church fathers, assembled as delegates of the Dutch Reformed Churches, decreed that the blessed confession of these churches based on God's Word should form the subject material for the preaching of the Word once each Sabbath day. Truly Reformed men have thankfully done this in their desire to build up the church of Jesus Christ in the truth of the gospel of sovereign grace over against the errors of individualism, Pelagianism, and Arminianism. The Protestant Reformed Churches through her ministries of the Word have been committed to this same task for some sixty-six years.
This most significant practice must continue, if we are going to continue in the Reformed tradition. Catechism preaching has not been our weakness but our strength as churches. Our people have been taught and know the Reformed faith and their calling in God's covenant of grace by means of the faithful exposition of the Heidelberg Catechism in the light of God's most Holy Word.
However, there are those who are, to put it mildly, uncomfortable with Catechism preaching. From time to time complaints are heard from the pew about this style or form of preaching. Pressure is brought to bear on the preacher. His preaching is often criticized as boring. His Catechism sermons are too doctrinal. Some individuals complain that, when the Catechism is preached, they are not hearing God's Word. The faithful Reformed preacher is informed that the neighboring (more popular) preacher does not preach on the Catechism. This more popular preacher exegetes a particular passage of God's Word and only once in a while during the course of his sermon refers to the Catechism. This is the way the Catechism should be preached, it is claimed. Some Reformed preachers have caved in to all this criticism and, in a desire to appease men, have abandoned Catechism preaching entirely. Dr. James Daane, writing in his church's periodical, The Banner, made the following observation:
During the last fifteen years many significant changes have occurred in the Christian Reformed Church. While some minor changes-because forced upon the attention of the churches-have received considerable attention, major changes have occurred by trends that quietly and unnoticed worked their transformation.
One such trend-working change has been the increasing discontinuance of preaching on the Heidelberg Catechism. No one is conducting a crusade, of course, or overturing Synod to eliminate it. It is being effectively eliminated by attrition from the pulpit with the consent of the pew. Slowly but surely catechism preaching is silently stealing its way out of Christian Reformed pulpit practice (Banner, Nov. 2, 1973).
I have a question: Is that where the complainers about Catechism preaching wish to have our beloved churches go in the future? If we wish to have people who perish, as the great prophet Hosea said, "for lack of knowledge," then hasten the day when the Heidelberg Catechism will no longer be heard as the church's confession of the great truths of sacred Scripture.
Many, if not all, of the objections to Catechism preaching are rooted in a fundamentalistic conception of the church. Fundamentalism is anti-creedal. The shrill cry of fundamentalism is "no creed but Christ." They only want to hear the Word, they say. We must not preach anything but the Word of Jesus Christ. We may never substitute "the words of men" for the Word of God. To do so, the fundamentalist claims, is presumptuousness and disobedience to our Lord. On and on the fundamentalist goes in his harangue against Catechism preaching.
Now really, were our Reformed fathers so foolish and ignorant that they violated willfully the obvious when they decreed: "The ministers shall on Sunday explain briefly the sum of Christian Doctrine comprehended in the Heidelberg Catechism..." (Church Order, Art. 68)? Do those who remind us that the Word must be preached imagine that the great divines of old were ignorant of this fact-that maybe they were over-zealous and lost sight of their high calling? That too is not true.
No church on the face of the earth has had a higher view of preaching than the Reformed church. She has always been insistent that the Word must be preached, and that it be preached in the service of the exalted Christ Jesus, our Lord and King. Exposition of God's Word has always been for the Reformed church the foundation of God-honoring proclamation. Here is the point: Heidelberg Catechism preaching does not violate that most sacred calling. Catechism preaching is the preaching of God's Word.
The fundamentalist critic of Catechism preaching demands to hear the Word directly. This is impossible-unless one would consider the mere reading of God's Word to be preaching. Yet the fundamentalist critic of Catechism preaching fails to recognize that when the sermon material is presented as derived by the preacher from Scripture, he is then already one step from the Word itself. This cannot be helped, for it lies in the very nature of preaching. But when the church is responsible for the sermon material, we are then but one step removed from the text of Scripture. Whether the individual interprets Scripture, or the church interprets Scripture, we never have in the sermon just the naked text of the Bible itself. In the preaching, the Word is always mediated to the people of God, either by the individual or by the church. Non-Reformed preaching is individualistic; Reformed preaching is church proclamation!
Catechism preaching is the proclamation of the Word by the church of Christ. The Reformed church studied, exegeted, and drew from the Scriptures the Word of truth. Reformed preaching is proclamation by the Church of Christ. All her preaching is that. But above all is that true of Catechism preaching. In our day individualism is exalted. People rush to hear what this or that preacher has to say. They want to hear the man. But the Reformed conception of preaching is not individualistic but organic. Believers as a body, the body of Christ Jesus in the world, preach the Word of God. The church preaches. Surely this is accomplished through a particular man, but he is one who is under the supervision and direction of the office-bearers of the church.
Further, the Reformed church is a confessional church. Her pulpit, therefore, represents creedal preaching. We believe, and therefore, have we spoken. The many believers, yet one body, preach the Word in the service of Christ Jesus through the instrumentality of one called and ordained by the church. No individualism is there, no free-lance preachers interpreting the Word in isolation and to the exclusion of the church as a whole. The church has an authoritative interpretation of the Word of God that it has decreed shall be preached to all assembled to hear the Word.
We must not grudgingly acknowledge that this is indeed the Reformed church's conception of the catechism preaching. Rather we must be thankful for this conception and position. Is there any one minister who can give better answers to the questions which are presented in the Catechism, than has the church itself in that Catechism? How would unity of faith be preserved in the churches if each minister would present these doctrines as he saw fit? We would soon have a babel of conflicting voices. All unity in the faith would soon be lost forever.
In addition, how is it possible that believers complain that Catechism preaching is boring, and that because it is doctrinal? Is not the church's confession in harmony with the doctrine of Scripture? Is it not true that to receive in faith the truth as it is in Christ Jesus is to confess the Reformed doctrines? The Christian faith is the Reformed faith. If one does not believe that, then I can readily understand his objection to Catechism preaching as being too doctrinal. Non-Reformed people will ever be irritated by Catechism preaching. But then, they are not one in faith with us.
How can catechism preaching be boring? It is possible that the preacher does not carefully prepare his sermons? Maybe he treats the catechism as abstract dogma. Maybe the minister in his preaching busies himself with proving that what the catechism says is biblical and does this by proof-texting week after week. That would be boring. But that is not preaching either, and why should we feel obligated to prove repeatedly what we have "confessed"? But if the preacher proceeds from the viewpoint that the Catechism expresses the church's understanding of God's Word and preaches it as the church's proclamation, then his sermons will ring with power and conviction.
The people will know that they have heard God speak to them His Most Holy Word through the means of the church's confession and proclamation. Then the church is given its rightful place in the work of the preaching of the Word. Then too individual believers will understand their personal responsibility to receive the Word thankfully, when it is proclaimed. They will raise their voices in protest, when the Word of God is unfaithfully proclaimed, because it contradicts the church's prior and authoritative proclamation in her creeds.
Let us make it our prayer to the great Lord of the church that we may be preserved in the blessed tradition of Catechism preaching, that His Name may be exalted, the covenant children instructed in the gospel, and all the saints edified and strengthened for their task in the world.
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