God Has Spoken
Preaching did not begin in the first century
When we think about preaching, one may be tempted to think of preaching as a New Testament phenomenon, or at least as a practice that finds its origin in the apostolic era with the public proclamation of the gospel of Christ.
Such an assumption, however, fails to reckonize the continuity that exists between Old Testament proclamation and New Testament preaching. The ministry of the Word did not emerge suddenly in the first century, but stands firmly rooted in the redemptive history of Israel, where God consistently revealed Himself and advanced His saving purposes through the proclamation of His Word.
Throughout the Old Testament, God binds His acts of redemption to proclamation, calling His mighty works to be declared, made known, and announced both among His people and before the nations.
David repeatedly calls Israel to “declare his glory among the nations” and to “make known his deeds among the peoples” (Ps. 96:3; 105:1). From the outset, the Word of God is not meant to remain silent but is to be spoken aloud as testimony to God’s saving action in history.
The Language of Proclamation in the Old Testament
This emphasis on proclamation in the Old Testament scriptures is not accidental. As Walter Maier observes, the Hebrew verbs commonly translated as “declare,” “proclaim,” or “make known” are rendered in the Septuagint with the Greek verb euangelizō, which is the same term later used in the New Testament to describe the preaching of the gospel. Even within the Old Testament context, then, proclamation is already shaped by a gospel logic, grounded in the announcement of God’s redemptive deeds and oriented toward faith and response.
What is proclaimed in the Old Testament is not at random, but it is acts of God specifically on behalf of His people. God’s deliverance from Egypt, His covenant faithfulness, His mercy toward the Isreal, and His kingship over all nations form the substance of the proclamation that we find through the pages of the Old Testament. This proclamation is historical, theological, and doxological all at once, and is always rooted in what God has done for the purpose of calling the hearer to trust, worship, and obedience.
Importantly, Old Testament proclamation is not limited to the covenant community, though it certainly includes it. For example, in Nehemiah 8, the public reading and explanation of the Law demonstrates that God builds and restores His people through the clear and authoritative exposition of His Word. The Levites, as there was reading from the book of the Law of God, came to the people and gave the sense, so that everyone understood the reading. Here, the proclamation functioned as a means of renewal, repentance, and restoration, as God addressed His people through His Word.
At the same time, the Old Testament repeatedly presses proclamation outward toward the nations. Think of people like Jonah, who is tasked to take the message of God to the outsider, or Rahab, who believed the word that she had heard. The call was never to simply recount God’s works to those who already know them, but to announce them to those who do not.
From the beginning, preaching has always carried a missional purpose. Not because Israel devised an outreach strategy, but because God’s saving speech is never intended to stop with a certain group of people.
Promise Proclaimed, Fulfillment Anticipated
Old Testament proclamation, therefore, functions within the category of promise. The heralds of Israel announce what God has done while simultaneously pointing forward to what God will yet do. The works of redemption proclaimed in Israel’s history serve as both assurance of God’s faithfulness and anticipation of a greater fulfillment to come. In this way, Old Testament preaching prepares the way for the New Testament preaching.
The difference between the two is that what was proclaimed in promise is now proclaimed in fulfillment. The same God who spoke through prophets and psalmists now speaks through apostles and His ministers, declaring that the works of God have reached their telos in Jesus Christ. He continues to save by speaking, and He continues to bind His saving work to the proclamation of His Word.
Recognizing this continuity guards the church from treating preaching as a tool invented to meet a particular need, and it keeps the church from pragmatic means to make the work of God effective. It is the means God has always chosen to make Himself known and to gather a people for His name.
The New Testament command to preach does not stand in isolation, but on the shoulders of a history of God addressing His people through heralds commissioned to speak on His behalf.
To preach, then, is to step into something that God has been doing across redemptive history. The preacher does not innovate upon God’s method, but submits to it, trusting that the same God who once called light out of darkness, and dry bones to life, continues to call faith out of hearing.
Walter A. Maier, “Preach the Word,” Concordia Theological Quarterly 66, no. 1 (2002): 3–20.
Joseph Henry Thayer, A Greek–English Lexicon of the New Testament: Being Grimm’s Wilke’s Clavis Novi Testament, s.v. “κήρυγμα,” (New York: American Book Company, 1889).
Jonathan I. Griffiths, Preaching in the New Testament: An Exegetical and Biblical-Theological Study (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2017), 122-130