That simple truth is taught throughout the Bible. The fundamental basis of any person's relationship with God is that we hear His Word and respond to it. Think, for example, about Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The striking thing about the intimacy of their relationship with God is not so much that they saw Him but that they heard Him and conversed with Him. He spoke to them, and they heard what He said and responded to it. When Satan moves to disrupt their relationship with God, he makes his attack directly on what they have heard from God: "Did God really say . . . ?" In the end Adam and Eve's rejection of God's Word defined their rebellion against Him because their hearing and obeying of His Word had defined their relationship with Him.
It was the same for Abraham. The beginning and foundation of his relationship with God was God's grace in speaking to him and calling him to leave his country and go to Canaan. The whole story of Israel begins with the words, "Now the Lord said to Abram" (Gen. 12). Think, too, of how God's covenant relationship with the newly redeemed, newly constituted nation of Israel began: it began with God speaking His law to them. Thus Moses said to them after he had given them the Law:
Take to heart all the words by which I am warning you today, that you may command them to your children, that they may be careful to do all the words of this law. For it is no empty word for you, but your very life. (Deut. 32:46-47)
If the people of Israel would enjoy a relationship with God, it would be through hearing, meditating on, remembering, and obeying His Word. The prophet Samuel's relationship with God, too, began by hearing His voice. First Samuel 3:7 is interesting: "Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him." Do you see how "knowing the Lord" and "hearing the word of the Lord" are brought together here? Despite all his time serving in the temple, Samuel did not truly know the Lord until His Word was revealed to him.
Of course, all this comes to its pinnacle in Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word of God. You see, it is in Jesus that God is most fully and most perfectly revealed. It is in Him that we come to know God and that our relationship with God is established. The apostle John writes about this in the first chapter of his Gospel. "The Word became flesh," he says, "and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. . . . No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father's side, he has made him known" (John 1:14, 18). John's language is dense and packed with meaning, but the essential point is clear. If we as sinful human beings would know God the Father, it will only be through the Son who knows Him perfectly, who is at His side, and who makes Him known to us. As the author of the book of Hebrews says: "Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son" (Heb. 1:1).
God speaks, and therefore we preach
As preachers of God's Word, we should understand how important and amazing it is that our God is a speaking God. He didn't have to speak, at least not to us. When Adam and Eve sinned against Him in the Garden, He could have let His last words to them - for all eternity - be the curse He pronounced against them. "You are dust, and to dust you shall return," He could have said (Gen. 3:19). And then silence. God could have left us in darkness and ignorance to live out our days as rebels and to die under His wrath, without ever knowing Him. Understanding that, it is a mark of the most amazing mercy and love that God continued to care for human beings after we rebelled against Him, that He continued to speak to us and to reveal Himself to us, especially in the person of His Son, Jesus.
All this helps us understand some of the poignant symbolism at work when one man stands before a congregation to proclaim God's Word. Some church leaders recently have argued for a modification of our idea of preaching. For one person to address a host of others in a long monologue, they argue, is simply wrong. It is tyrannizing, depersonalizing, and dehumanizing, a vestige of the Enlightenment or of Hellenistic thinking that we have long since gotten past.
We think that's wrong. In fact, we think the sermon as monologue - one person speaking while others listen - is both an accurate and a powerful symbol of our spiritual state and God's grace. For one person to speak God's Word while others listen is a depiction of God's gracious self-disclosure and of our salvation being a gift. Anytime God speaks in love to human beings it is an act of grace. We do not deserve it, and we contribute nothing to it. The act of preaching is a powerful symbol of that reality.
The picture of the first recorded sermon in the book of Acts is an arresting illustration of this. It was not a humanly planned meeting that brought these people together. God had poured out His Spirit, according to His own purposes, and then it fell to Peter to address the crowd and explain what was happening. He quoted God's Word to them from Psalm 16, Psalm 110, and the prophet Joel, and then he spoke to them. He told them what this meant and how it was relevant to them. Even their question, "What shall we do?" (Acts 2:37) points to their ignorance and need to hear. Peter preached to them a message they would not otherwise have known. It wasn't a dialogue or a discussion. It was a heralding of news previously unknown. Peter himself had not understood Jesus' identity apart from the divine and supernatural light God Himself had given him, and the people in Jerusalem would not understand it either unless God revealed it to them.
This is always the way it is with Christian preaching. The empty pulpit in many of our church buildings well displays the spiritual reality. We run around seeking life for our churches and life for ourselves through a million different methods, and the one means God has given for bringing people into a relationship with Himself stands neglected and disdained. In the act of preaching - a congregation hearing the voice of one man who stands behind the Scriptures - God has given us an important symbol of the fact that we come into relationship with Him by His Word. Just as surely as Abram was called to God by the word of promise addressing him, so we as Christians are made God's people by believing God and trusting His promises. In a word, we come into relationship with God through faith, and "faith comes," Paul tells us in Romans 10, "from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ."
There is only one God, and He is a relational and communicating, personal being who speaks to us and initiates relationship with us. Those powerful, life-giving truths are not only proclaimed but also powerfully symbolized by the preaching of God's Word. He speaks, and therefore we preach.