“Spirit-inspired preaching about Jesus is the way in which His power and authority are made known and people are enabled to respond to the great saving events of His death, resurrection and ascension. In this way they may engage with the ascended Lord Himself…
In the perspective of Acts, the glorified Lord Jesus is the new point of contact between heaven and earth for people of every race without distinction. The focus is not so much on His redemptive work as a fulfillment of the sacrificial system, but on the idea that God’s glory and kingly power are supremely expressed in Christ…
Preaching about Christ must be at the heart of a Christian theology of worship. As in the Old Testament, the word of the Lord is central to a genuine encounter with God. Those who are concerned about God-honouring worship will be concerned about the proclamation of the gospel, in the world and in the church, in public teaching and private dialogue.
If worship is an engagement with God on the terms that He proposes and in the way that He alone makes possible, preaching Christ is a key to that engagement. Acts points to the proclamation of the heavenly rule of Christ, with all its implications, as the means chosen by God to draw people into relationship with Himself, through Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit.
God’s great act of redemption in Christ is the basis of a call to enter into and enjoy the blessings of the new covenant. Worship in New Testament terms means responding with one’s whole life and being to the divine kingship of Jesus.”
–David Peterson, Engaging With God: A Biblical Theology of Worship (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1992), 143-144.
