The Point of Preaching

Guest post by Darryl Dash

It's not enough to communicate information when we preach. There's much, much more involved.

Paul puts it this way in Galatians 3:1:

O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.

Paul talks about preaching that didn't just communicate information about Jesus' crucifixion. It portrayed the cross before their very eyes.

I love what Martyn Lloyd-Jones writes: "We are to preach the Gospel, and not to preach about the Gospel … We are not simply to say things about it, we are actually to convey it itself" (Preaching and Preachers, p. 78). Tim Keller adds, "The point of preaching is not just to expound doctrine, but to make the doctrine real to the heart and therefore permanently life-changing."

That is the real point of preaching.