How God’s Kingdom Actually Advances

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1. 00:00

   Michael Horton

   The heavens are telling the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. See, we and all other creatures exist because God preached us into existence. Now the heavens preach his wisdom, beauty, and love. In fact, and I love this part, human beings exist because of a conversation between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Then God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness. Genesis 1:26. Not only were we created from a conversation between the persons of the Godhead, but we have the high honor of being created in conversation with this triune God. God created us as liturgical beings, meant to hear God's Word and echo back our amen, the way the heavens declare the glory of God.

2. 01:02

   Michael Horton

   In 1521, the Pope excommunicated Martin Luther. Under the imperial ban, he was abducted by his faithful prince, who gave the Reformer his castle's security. But while Luther was holed up in the Wartburg, his erstwhile lieutenant, [unclear], was fomenting violence against church and state in Wittenberg. The so-called Zwickau Prophets entered the city with their visions of Pentecostal grandeur. Picture Pentecostals and theonomists having a baby. That shouldn't be hard in our current environment. It became clear to Luther that he must return to Wittenberg. And so what did he do? Did he organize an army, arouse the prince to restore order? Did he boast of visions of his own or taking over the mountains of German society? Nope, he did none of this.

3. 01:56

   Michael Horton

   For eight days during Lent in 1522, he preached. I have opposed the indulgences and all the papists, he preached, but never by force. I simply taught, preached, wrote God's word. Otherwise, I did nothing. And then while I slept or drank Wittenberg beer with my Philip and with Amsdorf, the word so greatly weakened the papacy that never a prince or emperor inflicted such damage upon it. I did nothing. The Word did it all. I could have started such a little game at Worms that even the Emperor wouldn't have been safe. But what would that have been? Fool's play. I did nothing. I left it to the Word. What do you suppose is Satan's thought when an effort is made to do things by violence? He sits back in hell and thinks, how fine a game these fools will make for me. But it brings him distress when we only spread the word and let it alone do the work. For the word is the almighty word of God and takes captive the hearts. And if the hearts are captured, the evil work will fall of itself.

4. 03:12

   Michael Horton

   Later, Calvin wrote daringly to Cardinal Sadoleto, we're assailed by two sects, the Pope and the Anabaptists. For as different as they may seem, both seek to bury the Word of God in their corrupt imaginations.

5. 03:28

   Michael Horton

   Luther's Heidelberg Disputation in 1518 contrasted the theology of glory and the theology of the cross. In our sinful folly, we seek to climb up to God and behold Him as He is in Himself, in His majesty, without avail. One ladder is mystical experience, he said. Mystics instructed people to surrender their own identity and become one with God in essence, beholding him in a single ecstatic vision, a flash of light. Luther warned that they may very well behold a brilliant light at the top of this ladder since Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. 2 Corinthians 11:14. Another ladder, Luther said, is theological speculation, imagining we can know God's secret essence. And a third is merit. Now, all of these ladders Luther had climbed to spiritual exhaustion.

6. 04:30

   Michael Horton

   And today, these ladders of glory glitter across the landscape. The Roman Magisterium continues to reject the sufficiency of God's Word and the sufficiency of Christ's merits, yet Protestantism itself has succumbed largely to Pelagian self-confidence and spiritual enthusiasm. Never before have we needed a renewal of confidence that the Word does it all. That's not just a theme, a meme, a theory, or a doctrine. It's the reality, more real than I am sitting here right now.

7. 05:08

   Michael Horton

   We speak of the Word in three senses. First and foremost, the Word is the second person of the Holy Trinity, the hypostatic Word. But Scripture also speaks of God's speech through prophets and apostles. The Holy Spirit committed much of this preaching to the written Word. The proclamation of the Word is often called in Reformation traditions the sacramental Word, that is, the Word as a means of grace. In this sense, God's Word is God's working. Like our own acts of speaking, God's Word in this sense isn't an extension of his essence, but the effect of his presence and lively activity. The written Word, Paul tells us in 1 Timothy 3:16, is breathed out by God. And the same Word is proclaimed, which we call the sacramental Word because it's the chief means of grace.

8. 06:06

   Michael Horton

   As Herman Bavinck summarizes very well, I think, the phrase Word of God has various meanings in Scripture and can refer to the power of God whereby he creates and upholds, or his revelation to the prophets, or the content of revelation, or the gospel proclaimed by the apostles. Nevertheless, it's always a word of God, which means never simply a sound, but a power, no mere information, but also an accomplishment of his will. Jesus quiets the sea, heals the sick, casts out demons, all by his sovereign word. It is this sacramental word that I want to highlight, given the way in which the sacramental is often marginalized by a purely pedagogical and propositional understanding. In other words, reducing the Word of God to teaching and instruction. It's no wonder that the Word is often seen as a dead letter that has to somehow be supplemented or made alive by something else.

9. 07:18

   Michael Horton

   On the other hand, B.A. Gerrish observes, Calvin felt no antagonism between what we may call the pedagogical or teaching and the sacramental functions of the Word. Life is found only in God, located in Christ, mediated by his Word. God's Word for Calvin, says Gerrish, is not simply a dogmatic norm. It has in it a vital efficacy, and it is the appointed instrument by which the Spirit imparts illumination, faith, awakening, regeneration, purification, and so on. Calvin himself described the Word as the verbum sacramentale, the sacramental word that gives even the sacraments themselves their efficacy. And that, of course, comes from Luther. So specifically, the gospel is that part of God's Word that gives life. Not everything God says is saving.

10. 08:19

    Michael Horton

    Sometimes God's speech brings judgment. Disaster, fear, warning, and dread, Calvin reminds us. The Reformers drew on Exodus 33, where Moses asked God, please show me your glory. It was a pious request, but God warned, you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live. So instead, God condescended to reveal himself not in his glorious majesty, but in his merciful goodness. And he said, I will make my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name, Yahweh. And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will show mercy to whom I will show mercy. Even in this revelation, God had to hide Moses in the cleft of a rock and then cover him with his hand until he passed by.

11. 09:20

    Michael Horton

    Then I will take away my hand, God said, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen. God's humbler part, his backside, was the revelation of his mercy and goodness. Even in this theophany, the revelation is a sermon, and that sermon is God's free mercy. God's majesty is so terrifying that we would be overwhelmed with despair or driven to idolatry and self-justification in an attempt to avoid the God who actually exists. The only safe route, therefore, is to receive the Father through the incarnate Son. Christ is the saving content of Scripture, the substance of its canonical unity, Calvin notes. This is the true knowledge of Christ if we take him as he's offered by the Father, namely clothed with his gospel. For as he himself has been designated the goal of our faith, so we shall not run straight to him unless the gospel leads the way.

12. 10:28

    Michael Horton

    So we find the Father through the Son and the Son as he is clothed in his gospel. Enthusiasts through the ages have appealed to John 6:63 in order to distinguish the Spirit from the dead letter. Jesus said, it is the Spirit that gives life. The flesh is useless. And yet Jesus immediately adds, the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. See, Christ is the Word who upholds all of creation for the good of His Church and gives us His Word to dwell in us richly. Paul acknowledges the Thessalonians as fellow saints chosen in Christ, quote, because our message of the gospel came to you not in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction.

13. 11:22

    Michael Horton

    So the Word of God written and proclaimed is not an impersonal body of timeless doctrine or ethics or dead writings from the past, but is grounded ultimately in the Son as the climax of the Father's revealing and redeeming speech in a gradually unfolding history. The Spirit, of course, is its perfecting power.

14. 11:46

    Michael Horton

    Indeed, the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow. It's able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And before him no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account. Hebrews 4:12-13. See, God does things with words. He speaks.

15. 12:17

    Michael Horton

    That's how he creates, provides, redeems. Everything God does, he does with words. Although the divine essence doesn't emanate, God's words do in fact go forth and are sent on missions. We read again and again in the prophets, the word of God was sent. The word is that living and active energy that creates and recreates the world. It's never inert because it's the word of the Father spoken in the Son, made effectual by the Spirit. The hypostatic word is the Son, who is the sum and substance of the written Word of Scripture and the preached Word, which we call the sacramental Word, the Word as a means of grace.

16. 13:06

    Michael Horton

    We typically think of speaking as a way of describing our thoughts, but in the Bible, God's Word doesn't just explain various states of affairs, doesn't just describe things, it creates its own state of affairs. By speaking, God not only proposes certain truths to be believed and practices to be done, he does them through his speech. And I want to unpack this briefly in conclusion by focusing on his greatest works of speech.

17. 13:42

    Michael Horton

    The first is creation. By the word of the Lord, the psalmist writes, the heavens were created and all their host by the breath of his mouth. Psalm 33:6. Even in general revelation, according to Psalm 19:1, the heavens are telling the glory of God and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. See, we and all other creatures exist because God preached us into existence. And now the heavens preach his wisdom, beauty, and love.

18. 14:21

    Michael Horton

    In fact, and I love this part, human beings exist because of a conversation between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Then God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness. Genesis 1:26. Not only were we created from a conversation between the persons of the Godhead, but we have the high honor of being created in conversation with this triune God. God created us as liturgical beings meant to hear God's Word and echo back our amen the way the heavens declare the glory of God.

19. 15:04

    Michael Horton

    And that's why we even sing in church. Paul says, let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. See, it's part of the priesthood of all believers that everyone preaches on Sunday. Paul adds, "Be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ." See, God sings the world into existence, and the world sings back.

20. 15:55

    Michael Horton

    C.S. Lewis brings this out beautifully in The Magician's Nephew. In the darkness, something was happening at last. A voice had begun to sing the most beautiful noise he had ever heard. It was so beautiful he could hardly bear it. Then two wonders happened at the same moment.

21. 16:16

    Michael Horton

    One was that the voice was suddenly joined by other voices—more voices than you could possibly count. They were in harmony with it, but far higher up the scale—cold, tingling, silvery voices. The second wonder was that the blackness overhead all at once was blazing with stars. They didn't come out gently one by one, as they do on a summer evening. One moment there had been nothing but darkness, next moment a thousand, thousand points of light leaping out. If you had seen and heard it, you would have felt quite certain that it was the stars themselves which were singing, and that it was the first voice, the deep one, which had made them appear and made them sing. The voice on the earth was now louder and more triumphant, but the voices in the sky, after singing loudly with it for a time, began to get fainter. All the time the voice went on singing.

22. 17:16

    Michael Horton

    The eastern sky changed from white to pink and from pink to gold. The voice rose and rose till all the air was shaking with it, and just as it swelled to the mightiest and most glorious sound it had yet produced, the sun arose. The earth was of many colors. They were fresh, hot, and vivid. They made you feel excited until you saw the singer himself, and then you forgot everything else. It was a lion, huge, shaggy, and bright. It stood facing the risen sun. Its mouth was wide open in song, and it was about 300 yards away.

23. 17:55

    Michael Horton

    And as he walked and sang, the valley grew with green grass. It spread out from the lion like a pool. It ran up the sides of the little hills like a wave. Soon there were other things besides grass. The slopes grew dark with heather, and when he burst into a rapid series of lighter notes, she was not surprised to see primroses suddenly appearing in every direction. But now the song had once more changed. It was more like what we should call a tune, but it was also far wilder. It made you want to run and jump and climb.

24. 18:33

    Michael Horton

    Showers of birds came out of the trees. Butterflies fluttered. Bees got to work on the flowers as if they hadn't a second to lose. And now you could hardly hear the song of the lion. There was so much cawing, cooing, crowing, braying, neighing, baying, barking, lowing, bleating, and trumpeting. Then there came a swift flash like a fire, but it burnt nobody, either from the sky or from the lion itself. And every drop of blood tingled in the children's bodies, and the deepest, wildest voice they had ever heard was saying, Narnia, Narnia, Narnia, awake! Love! Think! Speak! Be waking trees, be talking beasts, be divine waters.

25. 19:27

    Michael Horton

    But we're also judged and comforted by the word. God's word not only warns and promises, it brings about in history that which is threatened in the warning and promised in the good news. We read in Isaiah 9:8, for example, the Lord sent a word against Jacob and it fell on Israel. How often do we encounter in the prophets that familiar formula, the word of the Lord came to me saying? Far from being a dead letter, the word gets around. It's God's work.

26. 20:03

    Michael Horton

    Leading Israel from Exodus to conquest, the name is the purposeful, restless, unrelenting God on the move, refusing to have anyone build him a house since it's God who is the architect and builder. The word not only explains, describes, asserts, and promises, but arrives. The answer in the vast majority of cases in the prophets is that the word of God came. The Lord came in the energy of his powerful word delivered through the prophets, and now consummately in the one who is the word of God, not just in God's energy, but in his essence. Hebrews 1:1-3.

27. 20:48

    Michael Horton

    More than an event, to be sure, the sacramental word nevertheless is not less than that, nor is it ever lost to the ebb and flow of history. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am God and there is no other. By myself I have sworn, from my mouth has gone forth in righteousness a word that shall not return. To me every knee shall bow and every tongue shall swear.

28. 21:26

    Michael Horton

    Jesuit scholar Walter Ong pointed out that the oral cultures of the Bible and Homer regarded the spoken word as living and active. In Homeric culture, winged words, a metaphor that Irenaeus also favored for the gospel. It's a world-creating, world-shaping, and world-filling sound.

29. 21:49

    Michael Horton

    Plato, by contrast, made speech subordinate to intellectual contemplation, eternal ideas. And modernity increasingly assimilates even the written deposits of these oral cultures to the inert matter that should be dissected, mapped, and controlled in space by the mind. Sound signals the present use of power, since sound must be in active production in order to exist at all. But vision can reveal also mere acquiescence, like a still life display. Sound can induce repose, but it never reveals just being there. It tells us something's going on. That's why cultures that don't reduce words to space but know them as oral phenomena, things that you hear, naturally regard words as more powerful than do literate cultures.

30. 22:52

    Michael Horton

    Words are powerful. Even the messenger was the monarch's representative precisely in the official act of speaking for the crown. In oral cultures, it's thus eminently credible, says Walter Ong, that words can be used to achieve an effect such as weapons or tools can achieve. And that's exactly how the prophets talk about God's words going forth as weapons.

31. 23:20

    Michael Horton

    Sound, voice, song. This is how God creates and recreates his world. On this point, I often recall the famous photo—you may have seen it—total strangers dancing with each other in Times Square at the announcement of victory in Europe. They were drawn together not by their Google algorithms, social media feeds, political ideology, race, or sex, but by the good news that was relevant to all of them. This news created a community that didn't exist before the news happened. They didn't merely read newspapers by themselves and then decide to form a study group to figure out what it meant. The Word of God did it all, as Luther said.

32. 24:08

    Michael Horton

    The prophet's role can be reduced neither to that of a mere witness nor to a mere recorder of divine utterances, but is the ambassador who is authorized and commissioned to speak that living and active word that brings about a new state of affairs in history. Isaiah 51:16, I have put my words in your mouth. Although Isaiah himself is undone in the presence of the holy king, recognizing that he as well as the people have unclean lips, the burning coal is presented to his lips so that he'll be able to speak God's word and sing God's word faithfully to God's covenant people. God compares his word to the rain that descends and brings forth fruit.

33. 24:58

    Michael Horton

    So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish everything which I purpose and succeed in the thing for which I sent it. Isaiah 55:10-11. Although that word brings Jeremiah reproach. The word, he says, is like a burning fire in his bones, compelling him to bring it to the covenant people day and night. Is not my word like fire, says the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces? See, God's words are event-generating discourse. Therefore say to them, thus says the Lord God, none of my words will be delayed any longer. But the word that I speak will be fulfilled, says the Lord God. Ezekiel 12:28.

34. 25:51

    Michael Horton

    In fact, the scene of the prophet preaching to the valley of dry bones in Ezekiel 37 vividly portrays this living and active word that creates the reality of which it speaks.

35. 26:03

    Michael Horton

    Bored of hearing the word, God's people turn to idols they can see. Just think of how many images we see and turn to in one day. Our idols are in our pockets. They're accessible. They're convenient. They know us and promise us blessings that they have designed for us according to our desires.

36. 26:28

    Michael Horton

    Habakkuk reasons, what use is an idol once its maker has shaped it? A cast image, a teacher of lies, for its maker trusts in what has been made, though the product is only an idol that cannot speak. Alas for you who say to the wood, wake up! To silent stone, rouse yourself! Can it teach? See, it is gold and silver plated, and there's no breath in it at all. But the Lord is in his holy temple. Let all the earth keep silence before him. Habakkuk 2:18-20.

37. 27:03

    Michael Horton

    Notice how the idol is mocked for its inertness and inability to speak and teach, its utter breathlessness. In idolatrous religion, the worshipers do all the talking. They're the creators of their religious poetics, expressing in symbols their own inner experience of what finally is simply themselves and their awareness, falsely interpreted, of the immanent creation.

38. 27:30

    Michael Horton

    By contrast, God speaks and the people are told to be silent, to give ear to their covenant Lord. Hear the word that the Lord speaks to you, O house of Israel. Thus says the Lord, do not learn the way of the nations or be dismayed at the signs of the heavens, for the nations are dismayed at them, for the customs of the people are false. A tree from the forest is cut down and worked with an ax by the hands of an artisan. People deck it with silver and gold. They fasten it with hammer and nails so that it cannot move. Their idols are like scarecrows in a cucumber field, and they cannot even speak. They have to be carried, for they cannot walk. Do not be afraid of them, for they cannot do evil, nor is it in them to do good. Jeremiah 10:1-5.

39. 28:24

    Michael Horton

    In contrast to the idols that cannot speak, God created all things by the word of his mouth. And when he utters his voice, Jeremiah continues, there is a tumult of waters in the heavens, and he makes the mist rise from the ends of the earth. Not only the worship of the images, but the making of them is strictly forbidden in the Decalogue.

40. 28:48

    Michael Horton

    It's really interesting. Jon Levenson, distinguished professor of Jewish studies at Harvard, says, it is significant for our understanding of the nature of the religion of Israel among the religions of the world, that meaning for her is derived not from introspection, looking in, but from consideration of the public testimony of God. The present generation makes history their story, but it is first history. They do not determine who they are by looking within, by plumbing the depths of the individual soul, by seeking a mystical light in the innermost reaches of the self. That's what Luther's enthusiasts were trying to do. Rather, the direction is the opposite, says Levenson. What is public is made private. History is not only rendered contemporary, it's internalized. One's people's history becomes one's personal history.

41. 29:48

    Michael Horton

    One looks out from the self to find out who one is meant to be. He appropriates an identity that is a matter of public knowledge. Israel affirms the given.

42. 30:01

    Michael Horton

    He goes on to say that there is a contrast between the Greek way of thinking in terms of vision, the eye, and the biblical Hebraic way of thinking with the ear. That's why Luther said the church is a mouth house, not a pen house. Luther went on to say that the organ of the Christian person is the ear, for that is where faith comes from, which of course is what the Apostle Paul tells us. You don't have to go up, climb up to heaven and try to bring him down or go into the depths to bring him up from the grave. He is as near as the Word that I am preaching. And therefore, faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.

43. 30:49

    Michael Horton

    And finally, we're redeemed by the Word. The eternal Son who became incarnate in the womb of a Jewish virgin is the one by whom all things were created and in whom they all hold together. Colossians 1:17. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. John 1:1-14.

44. 31:33

    Michael Horton

    Isn't it significant that the mediator of creation and redemption is the Word of God. Speech underscores better than vision or touch the procession of the Son from the Father. The writer to the Hebrews explains, long ago, at many times, in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. But in these last days, he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. Nothing reveals a person more accurately and intimately than speech. It's the voice, and Jesus is the Father's voice to the world. His words are the Father's words.

45. 32:31

    Michael Horton

    The Word of God is the source not only of creation, but of the events of judgment and redemption in history leading to the last day, as we read in 2 Peter 3:1-7. That's the reason the rider on the white horse in the Apocalypse is called the Word of God, Revelation 19:13.

46. 32:50

    Michael Horton

    See, Adam and Eve, and this is important, Adam and Eve turned inward to their own imaginations of what they could be without having to endure the trial that led to glory from God. They wanted to glorify themselves, find their own inner self. But when the second Adam at last arrived, he responded to the enticements of Satan by an appeal not to his inner experience as symbolized in that which is visible, the glittering kingdoms of the earth and the appeal to turn stones into bread, but rather by replying, it is written, one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. His entire life, recapitulating that of Adam and Israel, was a daily restoration of the liturgy that had been distorted beyond recognition by human sin. He brought the music back.

47. 33:48

    Michael Horton

    Here at last, we have one who could speak as the covenant Lord and as the covenant servant. He submits himself to the canon of Scripture. It is written. If anyone could have spoken autonomously, just looking within and speaking authoritatively from himself, Jesus could have done it, but he even appeals to Scripture. We are saved by the redeeming blood of the hypostatic Word, the second person of the Trinity incarnate. This blood is now applied to us by the Holy Spirit through the preached Word that points to that eternal Word incarnate.

48. 34:29

    Michael Horton

    Finally, just as creation is the result of a conversation between these persons of the Godhead, the church is the offspring rather than the origin of the gospel. It's no wonder that Paul compares the work of the gospel to God's word in creation itself. Romans 4:16-17. God preached the gospel to Abram until the patriarch found himself believing, and he does the same thing with us when and where he promised. The past is mediated to the present through this word of testimony, engendering here and now the same community that was originally related as eyewitnesses to those events, which themselves do not stand alone, but as Peter says in 2 Peter 1, have more fully confirmed the message of the prophets. Isn't that interesting? In other words, even their eyewitness testimony must be confirmed by the Scripture. Paul repeated the creed he had received, for I delivered to you as of first importance, what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas and then to the Twelve according to the Scriptures.

49. 35:54

    Michael Horton

    The path of law is a theology of glory attempting to ascend the hill of the Lord to behold him in his majesty, while the path of faith is a theology of the cross, of God's descent to us. And this is why Paul assures us, for Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them. But the righteousness based on faith says, do not say in your heart, who will ascend into heaven? That is to bring Christ down. Or who will descend into the abyss? That is, to bring Christ up from the dead. But what does it say? The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart. That is, the word of faith that we proclaim. Because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified. And with the mouth one confesses and is saved.

50. 36:56

    Michael Horton

    For the Scripture says, everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame. For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news.

51. 37:34

    Michael Horton

    All the manuals of mystical, ethical, or intellectual ascent belong to a message, the righteousness that comes from the law, message that is antithetical to the gospel, the righteousness that comes from faith. And that's why Paul says the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it's the power of God. For since in the wisdom of God the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided through the foolishness of our proclamation, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. Notice the logic of Paul's argument against our trying to ascend.

52. 38:19

    Michael Horton

    Instead of our striving, we hear a messenger bring us good news. God makes all the moves. God sends his Son to save us, and then he sends a herald to bring us the good news. We're recreated by hearing the word of God. Regardless of what I feel or think inside, I'm worded by God in creation, and then as a new creation. I'm who God says I am because his speech is defining and effective. The choice of preaching as a medium isn't incidental. It puts me on the receiving end, but it also highlights the weakness of preaching.

53. 39:04

    Michael Horton

    It's significant that some of the greatest ambassadors of God in history felt unworthy for the task. Upon receiving his commission from God in the burning bush, Moses complains that he's a poor speaker. And we've already encountered Isaiah's sense of his unworthiness as a man of unclean lips. Not only aware of his own moral unworthiness as a chief of sinners, Paul concedes his rhetorical weakness repeatedly in responding to the charges of the gilded-tongue super-apostles who are leading the people astray. Yet Paul says all of this is so that the power would rest not in us, but in God. Even the medium proclaims God's grace, pointing away from our ascent to God's descent at the cross to the Lamb who is worthy. Wherever God speaks the Son in the Spirit, a mass of individuals become the covenant people, and an anonymous space becomes a broad place of lavish abundance and freedom where the Lord dwells in the midst of Zion.

54. 40:13

    Michael Horton

    It's significant that in James 1:21, the Word is called an implanted Word that has the power to save your souls. And in 1 Peter 1:23-25, we read, you have been born again, not of perishable, but of imperishable seed through the living and enduring Word of God. And that word, he adds, is the good news that was announced to you. How much clearer can it be? It is actually through the preaching of this gospel that we are regenerated, that we are born again.

55. 40:50

    Michael Horton

    And that's why the Heidelberg Catechism teaches, faith is created in our hearts by the holy gospel and confirmed by the holy sacraments. Similarly, Article 5 of the Augsburg Confession reads, to obtain such faith, God instituted the office of preaching, giving the gospel and the sacraments. Through these, as through means, he gives the Holy Spirit who produces faith when and where he wills in those who hear the gospel. Throughout the book of Acts, the growth of the church is announced by the report, and the word of God spread.

56. 41:27

    Michael Horton

    See, God isn't looking for an audience that will hear his word. God speaks, and ex nihilo, that word creates its own audience. The word creates the hearers. The word creates the church. Proclamation is not merely an occasion for God to do something if we can somehow make it illuminating or informative or relevant, but God is there present in action. Christ himself is present in his word. The power of the word lies in the ministry of the Spirit, not in the ministers themselves.

57. 42:13

    Michael Horton

    God does, in fact, effectively mediate his word through the mouth of Moses. He actually touches a burning coal to Isaiah's lips and brings about the faith of the Gentiles through the gospel that Paul proclaims. Who dares to speak not only of God, but for God? Only the one who's been called, since revelation and redemption are God's work. And we know it is God's work when someone has been sent.

58. 42:44

    Michael Horton

    According to the Second Helvetic Confession, the preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God. Wherefore, when this word of God is now preached in the church by preachers lawfully called, we believe that the very word of God is proclaimed and received by the faithful, and that neither any other word of God is to be invented nor is to be expected from heaven, and that now the word itself which is preached is to be regarded, not the minister who preaches. For even if he be evil and a sinner, nevertheless, the Word of God remains still true and good. And see, this is against the radical sects. This is the same message that Luther had when they gave this contrast between the word that merely beats the air, preaching, and the inner word, the inner word, the inner light, the inner vision resident within the individual.

59. 43:44

    Michael Horton

    And that's why the same confession, Second Helvetic Confession, says, neither do we think therefore that the outward preaching is to be thought of as fruitless because the instruction in true religion depends on the inward illumination of the Spirit, or because it is written, and no longer shall each one teach his neighbor, for they shall all know me. That God can illumine inwardly apart from the external preaching is not denied, but this work of the Spirit within is always in Scripture connected to the outward preaching of mere mortals. What a great statement.

60. 44:21

    Michael Horton

    The Westminster Larger Catechism too has a good one. The Spirit of God makes the reading, but especially the preaching of the Word, an effectual means of enlightening, convincing, and humbling sinners. I love this, of driving them out of themselves and drawing them unto Christ, of conforming them to his image and subduing them to his will, of strengthening them against temptations and corruptions, of building them up in grace and establishing their hearts in holiness and comfort through faith unto salvation.

61. 44:58

    Michael Horton

    As important as the Reformers thought the reading, study, and prayerful contemplation of the Scriptures to be, the preaching of the Word of God has always been regarded as the primary means of grace. The church is the theater of that new creation with the Bible as the script and Christ as the central character. Even our speech back to God is his gift through the Psalms and our common confession. Created by his speech, upheld by his speech, redeemed by his speech, one day we will be glorified by his speech. We are like the rest of our creaturely neighbors, summoned, not autonomous beings. We exist because we have been summoned into existence, and we persist in time because the Father ensures that through his speech in the Son by the Spirit, that word will not return to him void.

62. 45:59

    Michael Horton

    Yet God's speech doesn't drown out our own. On the contrary, God gives us our voice back. It's the Spirit who baptizes us into the same reality announced and inaugurated in Christ's first advent. And it's the office of the Spirit to cast us in the unfolding drama of the people of God.

63. 46:18

    Michael Horton

    Remember that singing? All that singing that C.S. Lewis was talking about in creation, beginning with a lion and then everyone joining in? That is the theatrical plot of our lives here and in the future. Our lives are caught up in the action of that script. I think many evangelical churches today exhibit a high theory of the script, of scripture itself, while the actual performance here and now, that is the word conveyed through preaching, liturgy, song, and sacrament is often barely discernible except as a moralistic or therapeutic soundbite. On paper, high doctrine of Scripture, but often you don't really even hear much Scripture quoted in a service. Excerpts are taken to illustrate various points that we already believe or find relevant and interesting, but they're finally footnotes for the dull soap operas of this passing age. Somehow we must reverse this presumption that our life is the drama and the biblical drama illumines, serves, fits, or proves useful for our life story. On the contrary, the biblical drama is the plot that makes sense of our otherwise vacuous and dead-end characters.

64. 47:47

    Michael Horton

    I love this quote from Karl Barth. During the tense period of the Nazi occupation of Germany. The church is the place of fruitful and hopeful repentance, and it is nothing else. When the church crashes up against this point, it is overwhelmed with disgust at its own convulsive attempts, at one moment to ascend into heaven, at another to descend into the abyss. It is appalled that it should have tried to be both height and depth, to occupy them, speak of them, point them out, and apportion them. There's a certain horror at all attempts to bring about the work of God, to effect the incarnation of divinity or the resurrection of humanity by employing the dynamic demonic power of the church's own word.

65. 48:35

    Michael Horton

    The church may refine its liturgy, popularize its technical language, broaden the basis of the education of its clergy, see that its administration is made more efficient, yield hurriedly to the demands of the laity, however doubtful they may be, encourage theological journalism, approximate more closely to the uncertainties of the spirit of the age, to Romanticism, liberalism, nationalism, and socialism, may in fact bring Christ into the picture. But when he is brought into the picture, it is discovered that we cannot introduce him thus, either by bringing him down or by bringing him up, for Christ is not the exalted and transformed ideal man. He is the new man.

66. 49:22

    Michael Horton

    Only when we are silenced, Barth continues, can all moralizings and sentimentalities give way to the word of the cross. Yet even this word must not be transformed into a descent into the abyss, a gospel of demolition, which would be just another way of moralizing. Only when we listen to the word of Christ are we made truly the church. Shall we never permit our hands to be empty that we may grasp what only empty hands can grasp.

67. 49:54

    Michael Horton

    We remember the familiar words of Luther's A Mighty Fortress, that word above all earthly powers, no thanks to them, abideth. The Spirit and the gifts are ours through him who with us sideth. Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also, the body they may kill. God's truth abideth still. His kingdom is forever. The word of God did and does it all.