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Let me be blunt. Out there in church–land there are two types of preaching. Good preaching and bad preaching. Preaching that brings life, and preaching that sadly, heads off in the other direction. Preaching that’s clearly coming from God and preaching that ain’t. And it’s the preaching that God anoints, that He uses to speak His will into our lives.

One enduring memory of being dragged to church when I was a child was the droning of the preacher. I can honestly say he never said one thing, not a single thing back in my childhood that impacted my life for good. Perhaps there was one thing. I was so bored one particular Sunday sitting on these hard wooden pews as a young lad that I took the time to learn to wiggle my ears. That was it. An incredible waste of time when you think about it and really sad. Because there’s something really powerful about hearing the Word of God preached and receiving God’s wisdom that way.

Over the course of this week we’ve been talking about how we can hear God speaking, you and I. I mean, if God is God and we’re meant to have a relationship with Him then shouldn’t we be able to communicate with Him? Of course we can pray. That’s communication in one direction. But what about communication back in the other direction? And in fact, as we’ve already seen God is still speaking today.

We’ve chatted so far about hearing speak through His Word and during times when we get still before Him and pray. Well we’re going to chat today about hearing God speak in another way – through His providence of preaching.

Now the idea of preaching – some guy getting up and speaking about God’s Word, teaching what’s in the Bible – to some people, it seems like a pretty old fashioned concept. Pretty dull. And the other problem with it is, let’s be honest, there’s quite a lot of bad preaching going around as well. I’ve sat and listened to a lot of people talk about the message they get from their pastor on a Sunday morning, and I have to tell you in many, many cases the news is not good. There’s a lot of dead preaching out there, people droning on with irrelevant boring messages. Not everywhere of course, not every pastor, not every church, but a lot. And if someone’s getting offended, I’m sorry; I’m just stating the obvious.

A.W. Tozer in his classic book, “The Pursuit of God” put it this way. He said:

It is a solemn thing, and no small scandal in the Kingdom, to see God's children starving while actually seated at the Father's table. Sound Bible exposition is an imperative must in the Church of the living God. Without it no church can be a New Testament church in any strict meaning of that term. But exposition may be carried on in such way as to leave the hearers devoid of any true spiritual nourishment whatever. For it is not mere words that nourish the soul, but God Himself, and unless and until the hearers find God in personal experience, they are not the better for having heard the truth.

It’s sad but it’s true. And it’s nothing new. This is how Luke records the reaction of people listening to Jesus preaching. Luke Chapter 4 Verse 31:

He went down to Capernaum, a city in Galilee, and was teaching them on the Sabbath. They were astounded at his teaching, because he spoke with authority.”

And Matthew. Listen to what he records. Matthew Chapter 7 verse 28:

Now when Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.

In other words, this stuff Jesus was teaching and talking about is not the sort of preaching that they’d been hearing down at their local synagogue or down at the Temple on the Sabbath from the scribes and the synagogue leaders and the priest and the rest of the religious establishment. In fact quite to the contra