The Weight of Preaching

“Hark! The herald angels sing. Glory to the newborn King!” wrote Charles Wesley. God uses more than angels as heralds. Preaching means at its essence heralding. At its heart, it is speaking forth a message given to us by another. The concept of preaching as heralding becomes evident from the corpus of Greek words used for “preaching” in the New Testament. The writers of Scripture employ more than one verb for the proclamation of the Scriptures; the most common are euangelizomai, didasko, and kerusso. The mouthful, euangelizomai, literally means to announce good news, and focuses primarily on the spread of the gospel to the nations, with didasko emphasizing the teaching aspect: to provide instruction in a formal or informal setting—to teach, teaching. The closest equivalent to the English verb “preaching” is kerusso. Its meaning is clear: to announce, make known by a herald. It is important to understand that the words used for preaching were not invented by the church in order to describe what the apostles were doing. They used a common Greek word, such as kerusso, which they believed described most closely the nature of what they were doing. Even to translate kerusso “to preach” can be misleading. As the German lexicographer Kittel explains, “κηρύσσειν does not mean the delivery of a learned and edifying or hortatory discourse in well-chosen words and a pleasant voice. It is the declaration of an event. Its true sense is ‘to proclaim’.” Kerusso is “the herald’s cry.” Heralds have a long history in ancient civilization. The Septuagint has Pharaoh using them to announce Joseph’s rise to power in Egypt (Gen 41:43) and the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar used them to proclaim his decrees (Dan 3:4). In ancient Greece the prince employed numerous royal heralds, free men who worked closely by his side. Later they came to be employed by the state to announce official proclamations to the people such as public festivals or the victors of athletic games. They were seen not as formal rhetoricians, but as those commissioned with the task of speaking on behalf of the one sending them. Their value was in their faithfulness to the message given to them. Generally speaking, heralds were not viewed as particularly venerable. The status or importance of the position was based not on the nature of heralds themselves but on the significance of the message and the status of the one who sends them, “It matters a great deal which authority the herald serves. His status depends on that of the one who commissions him, and on the nature of the commission.” When a master sent heralds into foreign territory they were to be received hospitably. If the message provoked the recipient to anger, the herald was to be protected from harm as merely the bearer of the news. He does not represent himself, but his master. Branches of pagan religions recognized heralds of divine messages, sent by the gods to speak to men in their behalf. The Stoics and Cynics, for example, believed that the gods commissioned individuals to speak authoritative revelation in their stead. Preaching means heralding. The preacher is first and foremost a herald of God. If you have been given the responsibility to preach you are a herald. You have an urgent message to proclaim. You have been entrusted with a vocation. Your calling is to herald, to proclaim, to speak forth God’s good news. Stott writes, “So in the market square or some other public place, without fear nor favour, he lifts up his voice and makes it known. ‘We herald Christ crucified’ and ‘we herald…Jesus Christ as Lord’.” Preaching is heralding forth the message of God from the Scriptures. “Preaching is not conversation,” claims Piper, “Preaching is not discussion. Preaching is not casual talk about religious things. Preaching is not simply teaching. Preaching is the heralding of a message permeated by the sense of God’s greatness and majesty and holiness.”