News ages fast. A newspaper is usually read only once. After that it bores us. When the news is very shocking or gratifying, we might like to hear it again, but the thrill will soon dissipate.

Against this background, the sermon-making minister must have an impossible task. After all, what news does he bring? How old is it not? The material for the sermon comes from the oldest book in the world, which, moreover, church people read over and over again. (At least, that’s how it should be.)

The solution is not to say that the preacher is the only person who has the key to extract the news from the Bible. Over against Rome and its clergy, the church has always confessed that God’s Word is intended for everyone: farmers, citizens, and countrymen.

We ask, Does the minister still have any news to tell, or is the preaching an endless repetition of truths that have already been known for a long time? Should the churchgoer who is no stranger to Jerusalem sit bored all the time? Only on rare occasions will he hear something he did not know before. All things considered, it’s all known news. Should this not give the preacher the crippling feeling that he is coming with the same old truths for the umpteenth time? He gets his sermon from a book that everyone knows and owns. Moreover, he is bound hands and feet because he is obliged to expound that Bible passage: nothing more and nothing less. Only the gospel as it stands — other than that, no news. Quite possibly this is even more true of our overly familiar Catechism.

Our question: What kind of news can we still be expecting from a sermon preached in such a state of affairs? How can the message brought by the preacher still touch his audience’s hearts? At the seminary in Kampen it is widely agreed that Reformed preaching simply has to be listened to. This is true, of course. Therefore, the men here will concern themselves mainly with the requirements for preaching. What should be pointed out to our students and which areas should they be trained in, in preparation for this extremely important part of their work as office-bearers?

Our starting point here is of decisive importance. That is what this speech is briefly seeking to address.

In particular we ask your attention for one false starting point for preaching. We are talking about an idea that we do not find anywhere in our church documents, but that we comfortably carry around in the back of our minds. This is true even for the minster, let alone those who are preparing for ministry. In a certain sense, this starting point seems like common sense to us, which makes it extra dangerous. It is the opinion that preaching is ultimately the proclamation of old news.

Even being slightly contaminated with this notion brings the preacher into many temptations. These temptations are based on the preacher’s search for something in himself that will make his preaching powerful. To give one example: he might embellish his sermon with personal experiences or with real-life stories. This temptation exists because that one story is often the part of the sermon that is best remembered. It stands out as something new over against everything else.

A similar temptation consists in the preacher’s trying to make his age-old theme shine with relevance by citing the latest news from the media at every opportunity.

Yet another preacher may seek the power of preaching in a catchy style, a brilliant choice of words or in modern eloquence. Are these valid methods of preaching old news to modern people? Should the seminary student go in this direction?

Or has a preacher only succeeded when he has managed to give an unprecedented explanation of a text? The people may then say, “I’ve never heard it like that before.” Should this ideal be transferred to students: if at all possible, aim for new exegesis, because then people will be listening? Does the preaching indeed serve its purpose better the more news a church gets to hear? We have the impression that this view is not entirely strange among us. It is implied in remarks such as, “So you see, in church you can always hear things that you did not know before.” However, we ask: Is that the purpose of preaching? Should it bring out something “new,” something that we did not know before? Is that the highest compliment we can give to a sermon?

Please understand us well. We don’t deny that a new exegesis—when it is well-founded—can be refreshing. We don’t claim that a real-life story should never be used, or that a media message should never be referred to. But the question is whether we have to seek the power of preaching in those things. In our judgment, whoever does this is not sufficiently convinced of the power the Word of God has in itself. As if the preacher needed to turn that Word into something powerful, interesting, and up-to-date.

The apostle Paul, himself a great preacher, points us in a different direction. He wrote to Greek Christians in Corinth, people who had great regard for poetic styles of speech, that he had not come “with wisdom and eloquence.” He did not say that word choice and sentence structure are unimportant. His own letters are examples of clarity. But to people for whom style was everything he declared: the power of my message was not in my choice of words or in my style. It was in something else (see 1 Cor. 1:17).

And to come back once more to the notion of surprising the church people with a new exegesis: we don’t go to church to hear “something new.” After all, there is a negative tone in Acts 17:21, where we read of the Athenians having no other interest than to say or hear something new. Something new! A new finding. A new idea. Something of which everyone would say, “Hey, we’ve never heard that before.”

And yet these people who were so much interested in the latest news rejected the great news that Paul brought. Especially when they heard about “a resurrection from the dead.” Impossible. All news was welcome, provided the walls of their own thought-world were left intact. But the notion that all dead people would be resurrected completely overthrew their beliefs concerning the meaning of life and death. That news was too much for them.

This brings us to the core of our argument: the gospel and, other than that, no news. That does not only mean, figuratively, that the gospel and nothing more or nothing less should be preached. We are especially concerned with the literal meaning of our title: the gospel contains essentially all news. Besides that, there is no real news.

With this claim, we are intentionally portraying a very lofty view of the age-old gospel. What we are claiming is that besides the gospel, there neither has been or ever will be any real news. God’s Word is the only and complete source of news for all times. This implies that in principle we hear all news during the sermon—even the news of the coming week.

How so? Because the Lord makes known to us in the gospel what he has done with the world from the beginning…what he is doing today…and what he wants to and shall bring about tomorrow. That is why the Bible is completely up to date. In fact, it is still ahead of its time.

That is why God never thought it necessary for an extensive reprint of the Bible to appear after the completion of the New Testament. The written Word of God is intended for all times. It is not time-bound, because the author calls himself the Alpha and the Omega. He knew and determined the times we would be living in. The actual news about this time stands written in there. Whatever the radio and TV inform us of, whatever we experience ourselves, is essentially old news. We have been told of it already. The newspaper only confirms what we know from the gospel. Hence…the gospel and other than that, no news.

Yet, our title has even deeper meaning. This is that, according to the Bible, the news that we read about in the newspaper is no real news. According to the book of Ecclesiastes, it all comes down to the same thing. The preacher was someone who had seen much and had enjoyed life as no one else did. His life was full of variety. Yet the report that he writes of it all is monotony itself: one generation goes and another comes, but the earth always remains the same. The wind turns and turns, yet it keeps blowing from the same direction as yesterday and the day before. Rivers flow and keep flowing towards the sea, yet the sea never gets full. As far as these things are concerned, there is no news to be reported. What has been will be, and what is done has been done before; there is nothing new under the sun. If there is anything of which people say, “Look! This is something new!” (it might be printed in big headlines on the front page of the daily newspapers), the Preacher of Ecclesiastes still comments, “It was here before our time” (see Eccl. 1).

There is news about an attack, a war, a disaster. Yet it is the umpteenth attack, the umpteenth war. It is the same old song.

But now for the gospel! Not only does it already contain the news from the media, but it also comes with completely different news. It comes with a message that shoves all old “news reports” out of the way. It is the Good News that Jesus Christ has broken the vain, endless cycle of events. That is the big and joyful news. There is salvation. There is a way out. A larger view of things. This is really news, because it is at odds with all the reporting done on earth.

We are convinced that this is the starting point for sound preaching. It allows the preacher to start his work with the conviction: I may make known God’s plan of salvation to these Christians. I am coming with great news.

This is what he must make clear and transparent. And this is what must be worked towards here in Kampen. Because that news is not simply endless repetition, even though we will often hear the same things. No, the gospel must be proclaimed, preached, explained, administered, reached out with. And the future preacher will have to learn to do this from the deep conviction that the gospel is news! Through it, Christ is speaking today to his church. Being informed by him, we are not overwhelmed by what is happening in the world. Then churchgoers recognize the truth of the preached Word in their own lives. They encounter it again in the newspaper and radio message. But the wonder is that this message may be called: gospel, good tidings. Because it proclaims, within a world that puffs itself up, that a new world is coming. What makes preaching so arresting is that it does not come with expectations based on current events. It comes with God’s grand promises that are yes and amen. These promises bring about an entirely surprising turn of events, contrary to all the expectations of Athenians and Dutchmen and Zulu’s. Good preaching comes with astonishing news. It is possible that all our earthly expectations will come to ruin this coming week. But the joyful news proclaimed on Sunday will remain, because for the rest of the week there will essentially be no other news.

This will be an important starting point for the courses in sermon preparation taught here. May the new academic year of our Theological University serve to bring about an effective ministry of the gospel…the good news!