How do you view the preaching of the Word of God? No preacher today is inspired. His only authority is the Word of God. The message from the pulpit may only be, Thus says the Lord.
And when that happens, the preaching bears the message of the Word. It is to be heard and received as the Word of God. One of the sixteenth-century Reformed confessions, the Second Helvetic Confession, by Heinrich Bullinger, written around 1564, says, The preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God.
That does not mean preachers are inspired. It does mean that the faithful preaching of God’s Word is to be received as God’s Word! Read what Paul wrote in 1 Thessalonians 2:13. The church hears the voice of the Lord your God and the word of God when the Bible is preached.
If you view the preaching as the word of God, two things follow. First, you will want to hear it, whenever it is preached. If you know it is the God of the universe speaking to you, would you not as his child want to listen? Second, you will want to pay heed to it. The Lord through Haggai is calling his people to be not just hearers of the Word but doers of the Word (see James 1:22). If we do not listen for the purpose of obeying, we are despising the Word. To receive God’s Word is to hear and obey.
12 Then Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, with all the remnant of the people, obeyed the voice of the LORD their God, and the words of Haggai the prophet, as the LORD their God had sent him. And the people feared the LORD.