The invitation that was sent out for this meeting contained no less than eleven points of interest that are each related, in their own way, if not to the crisis surrounding the preaching, then at least to the questions posed nowadays about the nature of the preaching, that is, the proclamation. The relationship between the human word and God’s Word, the authority of the sermon, the functioning of this authority, the input of the preacher, the presence of the Spirit in and under the preaching: these are matters that we encounter in one way or another, now that there is an intensive devaluation of the word in our world of visual encounters — a world that is also full of conflicts, which do not bypass the church, and which sometimes bring a climate within the church in which sound preaching can barely function. How can we expect that in a personal struggle with the Lord God himself the preacher can emerge with an authoritative message? What to think of a preaching that has all the appearances of an exegetical treatise, but that does not touch the heart of the church? Or how to judge a preaching that is so stereotypical that with every text the same sermon invariably appears?

I have been asked to introduce this subject, so that in a hopefully thorough discussion the problem can be discussed and in this way a contribution can be made to the appreciation of the proclamation in our churches, something for which we may expect a blessing. In ten short theses I aim to offer a few guidelines that may be of importance for the discussion.

1. It has been the conviction of the Reformation, which we also consider non-negotiable today, that the preaching of the Word of God is nothing but the Word of God itself.

This statement was expressed in the second Helvetic Confession (1562). Holy Scripture is the Word of God. It has sufficient authority not because of the people, but from within itself.

This Word comes to us in preaching, and therefore does not change, by its very nature: “Therefore, when this Word of God is proclaimed by lawful ministers in the church today, we believe that God's Word itself is proclaimed and heard by the faithful, and that no other Word of God can be invented or expected from heaven.”

The preaching of God’s Word is God’s Word. Even now we have to pay heed to this Word itself, as it is preached, and not to the servant who proclaims it. It is stated very strongly: “Even if the servant were a villain or a great sinner, the Word of God remains true and good.”

This fundamental conviction is connected with the confession that in the human word God’s Word itself resounds. This insight is a result of the incarnation of the Word of God, the miracle of the incarnation, of which John 1:14 says: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us,” which has a gripping effect and radiance. In the weakness of the human flesh, the eternal Word comes to live among us. This does not only mean something for the birth of the Saviour. It is also significant for the form of the preaching.

The eternal Word comes to us on the lips of people of flesh and blood. God teaches us by puny creatures. Calvin speaks about the humbling way in which this happens. Humans raised from the dust proclaim the Word of God. The foolishness of the preaching is not only connected with the content of the proclamation, with the message of the cross, but it is also connected with the way in which God's wisdom comes to us: God has chosen what was weak, that he would put to shame the wisdom of men. Not through a voice of God as at Sinai, not through the voice of an angel as in the fields of Ephrathah, but through a weak voice of man, we hear the voice of God himself. This modality of God’s speaking belongs to foolishness and to the offense of the gospel itself.

Behind it all stands the will of God: the good pleasure of God who has chosen and provided this means in divine freedom. He did not leave it up to us to choose how he would work salvation in Christ. Nor did he leave it to us to decide the way of the ministry of this salvation. He himself has designated this way in his freedom. He has bound us to it and he still binds us to it.

Paul points to this in 1 Corinthians 1: 21-25: “For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe…. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”

When we ask the question of how the Word of God relates to the human word, then we can point to the parallel of the incarnation of the Word in the manger of Bethlehem. We can also think of the inspiration of Scripture through the Holy Spirit. And in both cases we can point to weakness, insignificance and foolishness, as well as to the annoyance that is connected to the incarnation, the inspiration and the preaching of the gospel. The preaching of God’s Word is the Word of God in the figure of a servant of the spoken human word.

2. From this first proposition the second follows. In the preaching, the authority of the Word of God has revealed itself. In other words, the authority of the preaching is no other than that of the Word of God, as far as it resounds in the preaching.

We can first of all take this in an entirely objective sense. Regardless of everything, also regardless of our recognition, and also regardless of our faith in the Word of preaching, this preaching has this authority. We could call it the way in which God makes known his authority in this world. God's authority over all things is proclaimed through his Word. In the preaching that divine authority comes to us. No one who hears it can withdraw from it. That is how God claims our lives. He requires it. He demands it for himself. When the preaching comes to us, we can no longer have any excuses. In that sense, we understand what Christ has said: that for Tyre and Sidon, it would be more tolerable on the day of judgment than for us, to whom the Word of the gospel has come.

However, the miracle of preaching exists in the fact that God himself uses this means to connect us to himself. Christ spoke as a person with authority and not as one of the scribes. He exercised his power through the Word. Thus there was not only an objective authority, a divine control with which God put his claim on our lives, but his Word brought a recognition of his saying: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” This authority of Christ, which he obtained on the cross, establishes the authority of his Father in the life of men. He now exercises dominion. He himself serves the Word as the Word of forgiveness: “Who has the power on earth to forgive sins?” This authority Christ transforms into effective power and efficacy to bind people through his Word.

When we speak of the authority of the preaching, which is based on the authority of the Word of God, we also have to make this distinction. The Word has authority; it demands it; it requires us to submit to it. Nobody has the right to disregard it. It is in accordance with this Word that we will be judged. Our catechism refers to this objective validity of the Word of God in the Lord’s Day that deals with the keys of the kingdom (Heidelberg Catechism, Lord’s Day 31). There it is established that “according to this testimony of the gospel, God will judge both in this life and in the life to come.” In this way God himself grants his divine authority to the preaching of the Word. He binds himself to it, just as he expects us to keep it as well. The objective validity of the proclaimed Word will one day come to light in the judgment that will pass over the world.

But this judgment is already in effect here and now in the preaching. It comes close to us. And where our hearts submit to this Word of preaching, the miracle arises that the authority of the Word is already being realized here and now. The authority of the Word of preaching is realized in human life, so that the power of the Word appears clearly. The authority of the Word of preaching then takes place in the hearts of people who, in the obedience of faith, surrender to it. Then there is not only the matter of an objectively valid authority of the Word, but it is about the power of the Word to bind people to Christ. Here it shows again that Christ teaches as a person who has authority and not as the scribes (Matthew 7:28).

One might say that the secret of preaching is the miraculous transition from authority to this power, the way from authority to power. The miracle of preaching, through the ages, has been that God himself is working in this transition, whereby the objective authority is effective in the power over our heart and conscience. Then there is no question of a moral power in itself, but it is a spiritual authority, which brings all of life under the dominion of God’s Word.

3. The living voice of God resounds in the preaching as the testimony of the Holy Spirit.

Especially in the Reformed tradition, attention has been called to the work of the Holy Spirit with regard to the Word of God. We can then point to three relationships. The first is the relationship of Word and Spirit as it is explained in the inspiration of the Scriptures themselves. The Holy Spirit testifies in Holy Scripture, because he himself has inspired the Scriptures. That is why there is, secondly, also the testimony of the Spirit through which he convinces us of the truth of the Word. In a way that goes far beyond any reasoning, he shows us that Scripture is God’s Word for us. Then there is also the personal testimony, in the third place, through which he testifies with our Spirit that we are children of God. That is how salvation is anchored in our own lives. The Spirit does this through the preaching of the Word. The Scripture is the Word through the Spirit. I know that the Scripture is the Word through that same Spirit. And I also know that I know: that is, through the testimony of the Spirit I know my own living relationship with the Christ and in him with the full benefit of being his child. In all three relationships we generally see the work of the Spirit.

But is there sufficient insight into the fact that the Spirit is witnessing through the preaching, in other words, that he is using the preaching particularly to let us hear the voice of God Himself? Or has this awareness among us disappeared into the background?

The Reformation has been clear about this. Olevianus (one of the authors of the Heidelberg Catechism) expressed himself in a short teaching about the preaching of the holy gospel as follows: that there are two preachers in the preaching of the Word of God, two voices to be heard, and there are two ears. The outer preacher cannot do more than let his voice speak the word of God in the outer ears of the outer man through his outer voice. He cannot, however, work faith and repentance in the heart of whom he wants, as the apostle speaks in 1 Corinthians 3: “So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.” The inner preacher is the Holy Spirit, who through his input plants faith in the heart of the inner man, and who also renews it. And when he does not open the ears of the inner man, then the heart of man remains hardened.

Olevianus adds that this consideration does not make the preaching unnecessary, because it is a means and instrument of the Spirit, whereby that preaching is the power of God to salvation for all who believe. Calvin likewise speaks of an external and an internal preacher, and in exactly the same way, he connects the Word of preaching with the work of the Spirit.

Have we perhaps placed too much emphasis on the difference between the outer and the inner working, and has therefore the relationship, the unbreakable relationship between Word and Spirit been lost to view? Is it perhaps also due to the fact that we do recognize the Spirit with the inspiration of Scripture, with the testimony through which we know that the Bible is the Word of God and also on the road to personal salvation, but less so when it comes to the miracle of preaching? It is the Spirit of Christ who in the preaching teaches us the living voice of God, so that it becomes the Word of God for us. The Spirit performs that wonderful transition from the outer authority, to the inner submission to it. He exercises his power. He opens the heart, so that we pay attention to what is said in the preaching. The example of Lydia in Acts 16 functions with the Reformers in the statements they express about the work of the Spirit. He makes us hear the voice of God, as the living voice of the living God in the preaching of the gospel.

4. What guarantee do we have that we indeed hear the voice of God in the sermon when we hear it only through the voice of a man? We may know from the Word of reconciliation that it is the Word of God, that is, from the preaching of the gospel.

All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.2 Corinthians 5:18-21.

Preaching is the ministry of reconciliation, the entrusted Word of reconciliation. The point is that through our mouth God exhorts the hearers: Be reconciled! The voice of God is recognizable where the gospel of atonement is preached. It is recognizable as the Word of reconciliation, which comes from the mouth of the preacher: “As if God admonished you through our mouth...” This “as if” is not meant to question the truthfulness of the proclamation: we only pretend that God used our mouths. No, this “as if” is meant to indicate the complete reliability of the preaching of the gospel.

The servant is speaking. But the hearer hears the voice of God from that mouth. Calvin says, “This does not serve little to increase faith in the office of the ambassador. And this is absolutely necessary. For who would rest in the testimony of a man in regard to his eternal salvation? This is too important a matter than that we can be content with the testimony of a man unless it is certain that they are ordained of God and that God speaks to us through them. And this is the tenor of the statements by which Christ wanted to distinguish his apostles: ‘whoever hears you hears Me,’ etc., and ‘what you will dissolve on earth will be dissolved in heaven’, and so on.”

How do I know that the preacher’s mouth is the mouth of God for me at this particular moment? When he abides by the Word of reconciliation and by nothing else. Or, when he preaches the gospel, as the Word of God offers the gospel of Christ Jesus and him crucified. He who does not serve this message, says Calvin, cannot be regarded as a shepherd or as an apostle

The sermon can never make the voice of God heard when the gospel does not resound. Christ has accomplished the atonement. He has finished his work on the cross. Its ministry means that the power of that reconciliation breaks through in our lives. And this is done by the ministry of the Word and by nothing else: the Word alone, the Word in its totality.

The Word alone. That means that every private hobby or opinion must be completely contraband in the pulpit. Everything that does not fit with the Word of God is forbidden there. This makes the pulpit into a dangerous place. How easily do we go beyond our own ideas, opinions or insights, which are then imposed on people with authority, “as if God were exhorting the people through our mouths.” There is only one way to escape it. It is the pure proclamation of nothing but the Word of God: Sola Scriptura.

But then it must also be conceived in the broadest sense: the entire Scripture. God did not give us a textbook, but his Word. It is a gold mine, which never runs out. Behind that Word the preacher is safe, when he also proclaims the full counsel of God. He may then, but only then, speak with authority, which is based on the speaking of God himself.

5. When in this way the voice of God is heard in the preaching, the hearer also appears in a certain way.

We remember the saying that one should hear his name in the sermon. This indicates that the hearer first of all appears in the preaching as the one who is being addressed. The Word of God comes to him or her. In this way the “converse side” of the preaching shows itself in relation to the congregation. One can approach it collectively, as a covenant congregation and not as an arbitrary group of listeners. It can also be addressed to the individual members who together make up the congregation, so that at the same time attention can be paid to the personal needs and questions that live in the congregation.

The voice of the Lord, the vox Dei, is coming to this church. The hearers find themselves under God’s call, the vocatio. God calls them. He calls them as sinners who have to be justified. The Word of the preaching has to work toward that. The administration of the keys of the kingdom means nothing else than to bring in or to exclude. Sinners are called to repentance. They are also called to sanctify and renew all of life. The voice of God that is heard in the preaching wants to bring about this renewal of life. God calls them to his glory. That aspect, on which the expectation of the congregation is built, must also be shown in the preaching.

Where God’s voice is heard in the preaching, there repentance, justification and sanctification come about. Faith is through hearing and hearing through the Word of God. Behind that audible Word is the calling God, who has sent his servants to preach the gospel: “How lovely on the mountains are the feet of those who bring peace” (see Romans 10). In this way we can speak of the “converse side” of the preaching in relation to the congregation.

But a congregation does not just appear in the preaching to listen and to respond. It does not just appear in order to hear what the Spirit says to the church, it also appears in the preaching as the church that has the anointing of the Holy One (1 John 2: 20, 27), who knows these things and that does not need anyone to teach this. The church, that is, the hearers, also have the gift of the Spirit according to the calling of God. That is why it is a mistake to think that the preaching is the work of one person only, that it has one-way traffic only. When the church is not active in the hearing of the Word, in receiving the Word of preaching, the Word diminishes and even becomes scarce, as in the days of the young boy Samuel. In fact, if the hearers do not become doers who share in the fellowship of the gospel, and who also can judge the preaching and do this effectively, then the Word of God will soon turn back empty to the pulpit. That does not mean that it returns empty to heaven, from where it was sent, but it does mean that there will be less fruit from the preaching.

This dual aspect of hearing and actually receiving the Word of God shows that God’s voice is powerful. God sends his Word. He employs the preacher for this so that he may speak authoritatively to the congregation. But this proclaimed Word of God will accomplish what is pleasing to God. It will prosper wherever he sends it. This is how both occur in the sermon: the preacher who is the first hearer of the Word that he is allowed to preach, and the hearer who hears what the Spirit says to the church, and who as a spiritual man recognizes himself in the preaching, and who can and may also all judge all things, inclusive of the preaching that is taking place.

The preacher is in a “converse” position toward the congregation, yet at the same time he is connected with that congregation through the Word he is proclaiming. This must give him the realization that he is at home in that congregation. He may belong to it himself and he may also share in the salvation that he proclaims to others.

6. The preacher and the hearer meet each other in the preaching only when the Holy Spirit is present in the sermon.

The Spirit is the one who builds bridges between the pulpit and the pew. We are going a step further than before, when we dealt with the testimony of the Spirit as it functions with regard to the Word being preached. We may view the preaching as a moment in the work of the Spirit where he appropriates to us what we have in Christ. The preaching is a means of that grace by which sinners are brought to the grace of Christ and actually grow and increase in the knowledge of it. In this sense, the sermon appears as a means of grace in all the work that the Spirit does to glorify Christ. Preaching is therefore a highly spiritual activity.

But we gain in our understanding when we say that the Spirit also ought to occur in preaching. We mention him as well. We proclaim Jesus Christ as the crucified one. Yet this focus on Christ and on his cross alone does not mean that we are silent about the Spirit and his work. Would our silence about the mystery of the work of the Spirit not also have caused a vacuum to arise in the experience of the congregation?

Paul speaks about the ministry of the atonement in 2 Corinthians 5, after he first explained that his service in the church was a ministry of the Holy Spirit. Through his service the believers have become like living letters, readable to all people. But his service was a ministry of the Spirit, a ministry of the new covenant, a ministry not of death but of life. Where the Spirit is, there is life. There also a living congregation arises, where it is about freedom and glory (2 Corinthians 3: 1-18).

This will be and remain lofty language if we do not place these words within the context of the Spirit’s work. Any shortage of spirit and life in the congregation, any disturbed contact between pulpit and pew, could well be deduced from a lack of active and conscious attention to the freedom of the work of the Spirit.

A person on the pulpit could become despondent. It is a well-known phenomenon. Luther once remarked that he had preached for twenty-five years and that it had yielded almost nothing. At the same time, he left the outcome to God himself. Paul did the same:

Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practise cunning or to tamper with God's word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of God.2 Corinthians 4:1-2

The treasure is indeed in an earthen vessel. This makes it clear that the power is from God and not from us.

But that power may also be anticipated; it may also be proclaimed. The work of the Spirit also belongs to the treasure that can and should be opened in the preaching for the eye, for the heart and for the feeling of the people. In this way the emotional experience of man is also involved in salvation.

By reading Paul on this matter one is convinced that his work consisted not only in proclaiming the crucified Christ, the only theology, but also in proclaiming the work of the Spirit as the one that connects us to Christ. This work belongs to the preaching of the promise: the Spirit appropriates to us what we have in Christ.

7. The voice of God in the preaching comes to us as a component of the pastorate as such and as a whole.

We speak about the voice of God in the sermon and about its recognisability for the church. We should not forget that the sermon as such is a small part of the pastoral care as practised within the congregation. The question is whether we do well when we isolate the sermon as the most important ecclesiastical and spiritual event that a human being can experience.

We recognize the situation that in our churches we have experienced a development in this direction. By and large the churches have become sermon-churches. Through the perforation of congregational boundaries, which takes place virtually everywhere in our church and throughout the country, there is actually an over-accentuation of the preaching. People’s ecclesiastical choice is determined by the question of who preaches where and in what way. One hears of people, young people and the elderly, who keep their attestation until they have made their choice. It largely depends on the sermon, which naturally also has an entourage in liturgy and tradition, but yet the sermon is decisive in the choice of what church one will attend.

It requires no argument that this development implies an isolation from the sermon. It becomes separated from pastoral care, while it is precisely this mutual relationship between sermon and pastoral care that is of vital importance to both.

The teacher is also a shepherd. He practises his task as shepherd through his teaching from and according to Scripture. The teaching of the church is, according to original Reformational understanding, nothing more than the preaching of the gospel itself. It is, also on the pulpit, in the service of the pastorate (that is, pastoral care). Whoever takes up the shepherd's staff in a congregation sees himself placed before the task of leading it in good pastures. The Word is the staff, the Word is the pasture, the Word offers consolation and it contains admonition. But all of it is within the framework of being a shepherd.

That is why we are on the wrong track when we separate the sermon from the whole of the shepherding of the congregation. The preaching belongs with the catechesis, with the home visits, the conversations in the family and the counseling in private, to the one complex that together makes up the pastorate in the church. When it comes down to it, the shepherd’s function is more important than the teacher’s. Because the latter only functions in the service of the former. Christ is the great Shepherd of the sheep. He gathered the scattered sheep. Through his death, he even wanted to gather the scattered children of God.

A sermon must therefore have a proper reception in the pastoral congregation. With the latter, we do not mean to reduce the importance of the diaconal community, or any reduction in relation to the missionary congregation. We see the sermon as an essential element of all labour that takes place in the congregation and which is used by God to bring the crowd that no one can count before the throne and before the Lamb, who will lead his people to the living fountains of waters.

This view of the sermon, as part of a larger whole, has been largely lost within our churches. Hence, a servant of the Word is often judged only by the gifts he shows in the pulpit. With that, we over-state what is happening there. Ecclesiastical life would gain in health when the view of office and congregation could be adjusted in this direction.

8. Paul speaks of his preaching as a demonstration of the Spirit and of power. In doing so, he has thus declared the secret of his proclamation.

We think of the well-known words of Paul, in which he placed his testimony of God in front of the wisdom of this world:

And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.1 Corinthians 2:1-5

The contrast is clear: it is situated in the wisdom with its compelling words and the foolishness of the gospel, in which however, the power of God is revealed. Opposite human wisdom, which tries to win the spirits with all kinds of fascinating means, is the Spirit and power of God. If Paul were to illustrate the contrast today, he would juxtapose the auditory with the visual, the spoken word with the visible imagination that must bring about a reaction in man. But in fact the weight has then moved. It is no longer about the message, but about the presentation; no longer about the content, but about the style.

Let me be clear: the form in which the message is offered is of eminent importance. Christ was born and laid in the manger. That is connected with the nature of the gospel of the cross. But this does not mean that the form in which the gospel is preached is not significant. It is even a question whether we have the agility Paul possessed, who wanted to be a Jew to the Jews, a Greek to the Greeks, and everything to everyone, so that he might win some. The presentation of the testimony is not without significance. But it does not come in words of human wisdom. The congregations are sometimes too touchy-feely when it comes to hearing. It is even a question whether the boredom with which one listens to a preacher is not connected with the fact that one is bored with the message of the gospel. Who or what could really interest us? If the holy gospel can no longer grab us, what artificial trick of whichever preacher can then still keep our attention captive? And what kind of attention or what kind of interest does this represent?

Anyone who wants to take action in the church against the one-man show, with which a comedian sells his business, has lost the battle in advance. Does such an entertainer still value the gospel?

Spirit and power: they also give us the opportunity to be honest with regard to the church and its mutual relationships. In fact, Paul speaks to Corinth's congregation with an inner freedom, bearing witness to the sin of division, of hyper-spirituality and of pride. Paul had to deal with this congregation about his calling. They forced him to show his papers, challenged his authenticity. What else could he say than that this congregation itself was the proof of his mission? The secret of his actions lay in the power with which he called himself by God: “The love of Christ compels us.” That love made him speak harsh words to the address of the congregation, yet in such a way that it caused people’s sadness before God, who turns an unrepentant conversion into salvation.

9. What must happen if the minister and the congregation are tired of each other or live in a conflict situation?

With a bit of imagination it can be said that Corinth’s congregation was getting bored with its minister and that the relationships between them were disturbed. But even then the apostle did not use any other means in that situation than the preaching of the gospel itself.

When we are faced with a disturbed relationship between the minister and the congregation because they are tired of each other, or if we ask ourselves whether there can be an authoritative preaching when the minister and the congregation live together in a conflict situation, then we have to measure the relationships and evaluate them according to this criterion. Is the preaching of the gospel itself at issue, or are we dealing with clumsiness, with psychological blunders, with a harsh and haughty behaviour, in which the congregation is no longer able to look past the preacher to the sender, and in which the minister can no longer function as a servant of Christ.

Let us not say too easily that the minister is called by God after all, and that this calling must remain regardless, even if the church would as such be torn and dismembered. The calling to the office has three factors: desire, ability and also the possibility to function in a particular situation. Our fathers were aware that it was possible that these three factors were not always equally clear. They have often protected a pastor against his congregation. But they have also not been afraid to dissolve the bond between a minister and a congregation in utterly disturbed relations by detaching him from a congregation, or simply by moving him to another congregation.

I say these things to make clear that the insight that office and church are involved in preaching is of invaluable importance. The office is not absolute: that is, it does not stand alone. It does not work independently from a congregation. If there is no consistency between the congregation and its minister and a situation arises in which only stones are covering the field, they must first be cleared. The thought must not prevail that the church is there for the benefit of the minister. Yet, once again, when the gospel is really at stake, when it pertains to that message of grace, which is to be administered in the church’s functioning of the keys, then the minister cannot give in. Then the church council has to stand around him and behind him. Then the bond of churches in the federation will also form a security, so that the Word of grace can continue to go forth unhindered, and the testimony of God could be experienced in the Spirit and power.

10. After all that has been said, it seems unnecessary to dwell for a long time on the question: What should a church do and what is a church council expected to do when with every text consistently the same sermon is delivered in the form of a fixed schematic exposition of spiritual notions?

The first thought that comes up here is: how are things in connection with the preacher? It is a question that is asked during the church visitation, and when the servant is outside the room: Does he study well? The question is whether the minister makes the effort to prepare for the preaching by conducting a thorough exegesis. “He who does not study is not converted” — that is an expression that F.P.L.C. van Lingen liked to quote, as spoken by Dr. Gunning. Prof. dr. J.J. van der Schuit used the same saying repeatedly. There is nothing against staying with the old truth; however, it is inconceivable that from the treasure of the Word, new and old things are not always brought forth. Note well that the new things even come first (Matthew 13:52). New treasures must be mined from the Word, and that also requires labour in the sweat of your face.

It is in fact also inexplicable that one does not want to reveal from the Scriptures those new things that also surprise the preacher’s heart. It is the privilege of his office that he may be the first to enjoy his work.

Neither does it fit with the work of the Holy Spirit, when each time a fixed schematic exposition is given, in which the system dominates, of “how man is converted.”

In this respect too, Scripture offers so much spiritual richness that the theme of sincere repentance should not lead to monotony.

As the question during the church visitation suggests, this is primarily a task for the church council. The conversation about preaching should have a fixed place at the meetings of the church council. The method, the content, the presentation and also the spiritual processing of the preaching must be discussed in a fraternal conversation.

The church council does not need to have studied ancient languages ​​to know whether the pastor knows about it. The text must be explained. It must be applied. And it must take place in such a way that the Word of God comes from that single text, and at the same time the message of grace comes in its surprising fullness to the minister and to the congregation. The Word must resound. The eternal gospel must be interpreted. And it is only possible, even today with all that has changed and that will change, when the minister stands behind the Word and at the same time knows himself bound to the Word along with the congregation.

Then it is difficult to think of something richer than to be a servant of the gospel of God’s grace. Where the Spirit of Christ works the power of grace, the church will always experience the surprising richness of the gospel.