All Things Seen & Unseen

I want to pause from outlining the Anglican Service of Holy Communion and examine the question of the preaching the Gospel in this service. Sometimes it can be too easy for preachers to re-tell a bible story and with that re-telling intersperse a number of moral exhortations. However entertaining this action may be, it is not preaching the gospel. It is presenting a moralistic discourse with lots of ethical crumbs which don't add up to the solid food of the whole Word of God. Ethical urgings are just a form of law after all. Nor by that comment am I disparaging the law. 'The law is holy and the commandment is holy, righteous and good' (Rom 7.12). To be opposed to the Law is to fall into the error of antinomianism (anti-, nomos [law]). But keeping the law cannot save us. The law simply arouses our sinful desires (Rom 7.5). Hence, although the law is part of the Word of God unless the gospel of free grace (Eph 2.8, 9) is also preached the congregation will go away believing ...

The next major section in the Anglican Holy Communion service is titled, The Ministry of the Word. For evangelicals in particular, this section is the highlight of the service because the Church in this section hears the Word of God read. On a personal note, in the first Anglican service I attended it was this section of the service that amazed and delighted me. Before that service, I had honestly believed that Anglicans could not be classed as biblical Christians at all but as Romanists (Roman Catholics) who rarely if ever opened their bibles. However, I was confronted with four Scripture readings done with such reverence and solemnity that I hadn't heard delivered in such a way before. And this was in a high Anglican service with crossing and genuflecting! Of course, I had heard the Scriptures read in former churches but usually just one passage and often that would be truncated. (Nevertheless, I now know that my background furnished me with a knowledge and appreciation for the S...