John Calvin often instructed his congregation about rightly hearing the Word of God. He taught them how they should come to public worship and how to hear the Word of God preached. Calvin wanted parents and children to grasp the importance of preaching, to desire preaching as a supreme blessing, and to partic­ipate actively in the sermon. Calvin said listeners should have the “willingness to obey God completely and with no reserve.”¹

Calvin stressed listening to the preached Word for two important reasons. First, he believed that few peo­ple listen well to sermons. More than thirty times in his commentaries and nine times in his Institutes, Calvin referred to how few people receive the preached Word with saving faith. He said, “If the same sermon is preached, say, to a hundred people, twenty receive it with the ready obedience of faith, while the rest hold it valueless, or laugh, or hiss, or loathe it.”² If proper hearing was a problem in Calvin’s day, how much more is it so today, when ministers have to compete for the attention of people who are bombarded with var­ious forms of media on a daily basis?

Second, Calvin stressed proper hearing because of his high regard for preaching. Calvin viewed preach­ing as a means God used to bestow salvation and benediction. Calvin said the Holy Spirit is the ‘internal minister’ who uses the ‘external minister’ of the preached Word. The external minister “holds forth the vocal word and it is received by the ears,” but the inter­nal minister “truly communicates the thing proclaimed, (which) is Christ.”³ Thus, God speaks through the mouth of His servants by His Spirit: “Wherever the gospel is preached, it is as if God him­self came into the midst of us.”⁴ Faithful preaching is the means by which the Spirit does His saving work of illuminating, converting, and sealing sinners. Calvin said, “There is ... an inward efficacy of the Holy Spirit when he sheds forth his power upon hearers, that they may embrace a discourse (sermon) by faith.”⁵

Like Calvin, the Puritans had a high regard for preaching. As lovers of the Word of God, the Puritans were not content with merely affirming the infallibil­ity, inerrancy, and authority of Scripture. They also read, searched, preached, heard, and sang the Word with delight, seeking the applying power of the Holy Spirit that accompanied the Word. They regarded the sixty-six books of Holy Scripture as the library of the Holy Spirit. For the Puritans, Scripture was God speak­ing to His people as a father speaks to his children. In preaching, God gives His Word as truth and power. As truth, Scripture can be trusted for time and eternity. As power, Scripture is the instrument of transforma­tion used by the Spirit of God to renew our minds.

As twenty-first-century evangelical Protestants, we must combine our defense of biblical inerrancy with a positive demonstration of the transforming power of God’s Word. That power must be manifest in our lives, our homes, our churches, and our communities. We must show that, though other books may inform or even reform us, only one Book can transform us, con­forming us to the image of Christ. Only as “living epistles of Christ” (2 Cor. 3:3) can we hope to win the battle for the Bible in our day. If we spent most of our energy on knowing and living the Scriptures, how many more people would fall under the sway of its transforming power?

The Puritan movement teaches us much about cul­tivating the transforming power of the Word. Puritan preachers clearly explained how the Word effected per­sonal transformation. They offered practical direction on how to read and listen to God’s Word.⁶ The West­minster Larger Catechism summarizes such Puritan advice in Question 160: “It is required of those that hear the word preached, that they attend upon it with diligence, preparation, and prayer, examine what they hear by the Scriptures, receive the truth with faith, love, meekness, and readiness of mind, as the word of God; meditate, and confer of it in their hearts, and bring forth the fruit of it in their lives.”⁷

In conjunction with Luke 8:18, “Take heed therefore how ye hear,” I will offer some Puritan teachings along with my own observations on listening to God’s Word, dividing the subject into three thoughts. This article will explain how to prepare for the preached Word. Future articles will consider how to receive the preached Word and how to practice the preached Word. While studying each point, we should ask ourselves: Am I really hearing the Word of God? Am I a good lis­tener of the proclaimed gospel? Am I teaching my children how to be good listeners?

Preparing for the Preached Word⤒🔗

“It is required of those that hear the word preached, that they attend upon it with diligence, preparation, and prayer,” the Westminster divines wrote (LC, Q. 160). This involves several, practical applications:

1. Before coming to God’s house to hear His Word, prepare yourself and your family with prayer. The Puritans said we should dress our bodies for worship and our souls with prayer.
   
   Pray for the conversion of sinners, the edification of saints, and the glorification of God’s triune name. Pray for children, teenagers, and the elderly. Pray for lis­tening ears and understanding hearts. Pray for yourself, saying: “Lord, how real the danger is that I will not hear well! Of four kinds of hearers in the para­ble of the sower, only one kind heard properly. Help me, Lord, to concentrate fully on Thy Word as it comes to me, so that I may not hear the Word and yet per­ish. Let Thy Word have free course in my heart. Let it be accompanied with light, power, and grace.”
   
   Pray that you will come to God’s house as a needy sinner, purging your heart of carnal lusts and clinging to Christ for the cleansing power of His blood. Pray for the sanctifying presence of God in Christ, for true com­munion with Him in mind and soul.
   
   Pray that your minister will receive the energy of the Holy Spirit, so that he will open his mouth boldly to make known the mysteries of the gospel (cf. Eph. 6:19). Pray for an outpouring of the Spirit’s convict­ing, quickening, humbling, and comforting power to work through God’s ordinances in the fulfillment of His promises (Prov. 1:23).
    
2. Come with a hearty appetite for the Word. A good appetite promotes good digestion and growth. Peter encouraged spiritual appetite, saying, “As newborn babies, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby” (1 Pet. 2:2). Likewise, Solomon advised, “Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God, and be more ready to hear, than to offer the sacrifice of fools” (Eccles. 5:1).
   
   A good appetite for the Word means having a ten­der, teachable heart (2 Chron. 13:7) that asks, “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” (Acts 9:6). It is fool­ish to expect a blessing if you come to worship with a hardened, unprepared, or worldly minded heart.⁸  
       
   The Puritans said preparation for worship should start on Saturday evening. Just as people baked bread on Saturday evening so it would be warm on Sunday morning, so people should study the Word on Satur­day evenings so that their hearts would be warm for worship on Sunday.
   
   If you know the passage that will be preached on the Sabbath, spend time studying it on Saturday night. Make sure that you and your children get enough sleep on Saturday night, then get up early on Sunday morn­ing to prepare for worship without rushing. 
    
3. Meditate on the importance of the preached Word as you enter God’s house. The high and holy triune God of heaven and earth is meeting with you to speak directly to you. Thomas Boston wrote, “The voice is on earth, (but) the speaker is in heaven” (Acts 10:33).⁹ What an awe-inspiring thought! Since the gospel is the Word of God, not the word of man, come to church looking for God. Though you should deeply appreciate your minister’s efforts to faithfully bring you the Word of God, pray that you see “no man, save Jesus only” (Matt. 17:8). Ministers are simply God’s ambas­sadors, bringing you the Word of God (2 Cor. 5:20; Heb. 13:7). Do not focus on them but on the Word of God they bring, always remembering that one day you will give an account before God of every sermon that He has brought to you.
   
   Teach your children that every sermon counts for eternity. Salvation comes through faith, and faith comes through hearing God’s Word (Rom. 10:13-16). So every sermon is a matter of life and death (Deut. 32:47; 2 Cor. 2:15-16). The preached gospel will either lift us up to heaven or cast us down to hell. It will advance our sal­vation or aggravate our condemnation. It will draw us with the cords of love or leave us in the snares of unbe­lief. It will soften or harden us (Matt. 13:14-15), enlighten or darken our eyes (Rom. 11:10), open our heart to Christ or shut it against Him. “The nearer to heaven any are lifted up by gospel preaching, the lower will they sink into hell if they heed it not,” wrote David Clarkson.¹⁰ “Take heed, therefore, how ye hear!”
   
   Furthermore, remember that every Sabbath you are receiving spiritual food and supplies for the com­ing week. The Puritans called the Sabbath “the market day of the soul.”¹¹ As the Puritans went to market each week to stock up on supplies, so we stock up on our spiritual goods for the week by listening to sermons, then meditating on them throughout the week to come. All of that must be reinforced with daily devo­tions and Christian living.
    
4. Remember as you enter the house of God that you are entering a battleground. Many enemies will oppose your listening. Internally, you may be distracted by worldly cares and employments, lusts of the flesh, cold hearts, and critical spirits. Externally, you may be dis­tracted by the temperature or weather, behavior or dress of others, noises, or people moving about. Satan opposes your listening to God’s Word with might and main, knowing that if you truly hear it, he will lose you. So Satan tries to disturb you before the sermon begins, distracts you during the sermon, and dismisses the sermon from your mind as soon as it is finished. Like a bird plucking away newly sown seed, Satan attempts to snatch the Word from your mind and heart so that it cannot take root. When you are tempted during worship by Satan, Samuel Annesley advises that you rebuke him, saying, “Be gone, Satan! I will parley no longer. If others neglect salvation, therefore must I? Will their missing of salvation relieve me for the loss of mine? Through Christ, I defy you.”¹² Pray repeatedly for strength to overcome all your enemies by listening well.
    
5. Finally, come with a loving, expectant faith (Ps. 62:1, 5). Be swift to hear, slow to speak, and determined, like Mary, to ponder God’s Word in your heart. Come pleading God’s promise that His Word will not return to Him void (Isa. 55:10-11). Come with the spirit of the Ninevites, saying, “Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?” (Jonah 3:9).
   
   Come with reverential fear of God and His majesty. Come with reverential delight in God and His Word (Ps. 119:97, 103). Say like David in Psalm 119:140, “Thy word is very pure; therefore thy servant loveth it.” Like David, love God’s testimonies “exceedingly” (v. 167), more than gold (v. 127), to the point where it nearly consumes you (v. 20). David’s love for God’s Word was so fervent that he would meditate upon it “all the day” (v. 97). In dependence on the Spirit, cultivate such love for the Word of God.