The Foolishness of Preaching
In the first epistle to The Corinthians, it is written,” it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.”
What immediately stands out is that preaching is God ordained. No one can make light of this fact, for without the call of God there is no authority, no power and no salvation based on just the activity of the preacher.
In some sense preaching is “foolishness” i.e., the foolishness of preaching is from a human perspective. How can a simple message, story have a life or death consequence?
The power of preaching to arrest the hearts and minds of men is seen at the beginning ministry of The Holy Spirit as no less than seventeen people groups heard the message in their own dialect (Acts 2:9-11).
Peter stood up with the other eleven apostles and he begins to preach the primitive gospel (Acts 2:14-40).
Almighty God empowered preaching the good news of Jesus Christ to be salvific to all men who will respond to it! God assembled a group of men on earth to get His work done.
There are many kinds of messages being heralded from pulpits in our churches today, from street preachers, from evangelist, from missionaries and from house churches. There are storytellers, motivational speakers, mythological poets, down home whoopers and hummers but none of them necessarily qualify us as preachers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. more on the internal call to preach So we began our study, by asking the question, exactly what does preaching really mean and where does it come from?
The word of our focus which is translated preaching, is from the Koine Greek,”Kerygma”… which signifies the message being spoken. So, a preacher with any other kind of message is really not a preacher in the biblical sense. The message must be in agreement with the revealed word of God to have the authority of the Spirit of God. What is preaching?
When we hear the “Good News” its because God has resolved to give mankind another opportunity to live in relation with Him…through the acceptance and obedience to His Son Jesus Christ. Believing the good news of Jesus Christ precludes eternal death and brings the life of God into our existence.
Through the foolishness of preaching God has invited men, who are sentenced to death, to eternal life with Him.
