Beloved,
The Puritan Thomas Watson once wrote, “Christ is said to speak to us from heaven now, by his ministers, as the king speaks by his ambassador. Such as wean themselves from the breast of ordinances [i.e., the public means of grace] seldom thrive; either they grow light in their head, or lame in their feet. The word preached is Christ’s voice in the mouth of the minister; and those that refuse to hear Christ speaking in the ministry, Christ will refuse to hear speaking on their death-bed” (Body of Divinity, 171).
Those are strong words, but they aren’t the extreme ramblings of a Puritanical prude. Watson is simply affirming what the apostles say in many places. Paul, speaking of his own ministry among the ethnically diverse church in Ephesus, declares that “[Christ] came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near” (Eph. 2:17). Christ never visited Ephesus during His earthly ministry, but through the apostle’s preaching, Christ preached. He tells the Corinthians that as he and his co-laborers herald the gospel, “God [is] making His appeal through us” (2 Cor. 5:20). He praises God that the Thessalonians received his preaching “not as the word of men, but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers” (1 Thess. 2:13). Peter likewise exhorts preachers in the church to speak “as one who speaks oracles of God” (1 Pet. 4:11). When a Spirit-filled man proclaims the Spirit-inspired word with Spirit-illumined clarity and Spirit-enlivened passion, we are hearing the voice of the exalted Christ Himself.
It was this conviction that led the Westminster divines to ask in the Larger Catechism Question 160, “What is required of those who hear the word preached?” If preaching really is the voice of Christ, then we better make sure we hear it in a way that is befitting of His supreme worth. What exactly does that look like? Well, the first thing these men emphasized as necessary was diligence. Answer 160 begins by saying, “It is required of those who hear the word preached, that they attend upon it with diligence…” The word “diligence” has a wide semantic range, but the proof text given by the divines helps us understand what they meant by it. They point us to Proverbs 8:34, where wisdom personified states, “Blessed is the one who listens to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting beside my doors.” This blessed individual is one who watches and waits daily at the place where wisdom resides. He is not content with an occasional encounter with wisdom, but steadily, consistently, and constantly brings his ears to wisdom’s door to listen and learn. Proverbs 8 is ultimately about wisdom incarnate—Jesus Christ. He loves to speak to us anytime we pick up the Bible, but as I mentioned last time, He speaks with a unique clarity and power through the preaching of the word in the public assembly. If we would hear His voice, we must be diligent in attending those services where His word is proclaimed. For as Watson declared, those who wean themselves from this ordinance of all ordinances will seldom thrive. After all, the word “blessed” that Solomon uses in Proverbs 8:34 refers to human flourishing through divine grace.
So, we begin with what seems so obvious that it doesn’t even need to be said. But unfortunately, it does need to be said because the serpent and our sinful flesh always lead us to be less than diligent in our adherence to the preached word. We can make excuses and seize upon the most trivial reasons to exempt ourselves from the public assembly. We can attend with consistent irregularity, not because we are providentially hindered, but because we are apathetic. And when this is the case, it evidences that we don’t truly understand or believe what the Bible teaches is happening when the word is preached. Christ is present! Christ is speaking! Christ is doing His most glorious works of soul transformation!
Oh, how sweet the voice of Christ is to the healthy soul, even when the voice of the human preacher is raspy and weak (like mine last week). To hear Christ—this is heaven on earth! And who in their right mind would want to miss out on that?
Yours in Christ,
Pastor Nick