Not only must the Church throw down idols, but the Church is called to throw down idols using God’s appointed instruments for doing so. We are to pull them all from their marble pedestals, but what ropes are we to use?
In the apostolic era, the word of God was preached with great boldness, and it was this proclamation that God used to form a new Israel throughout the world, one that would present a perennial challenge to secular Caesars. When that Israel formed, it was constituted around the Word and sacrament. It was not formed around superstitious mumbling—whether robed sacramental wizards mumbling over bread and wine, or learned librarians mumbling over a text and calling it preaching.
Jesus Christ has come into the world. He was born of a woman, born under the law. He lived a perfect, sinless life, and He did it as our representative, our Adam. He went uncomplaining to the cross, and there He died, with all your sins and mine on His flayed back. He was wrapped in linen and spices, and was laid in a tomb, and a great rock was rolled in front of that tomb. On the third day, He came back from death, terrifying the guards, humiliating the principalities and powers, and eventually, reassuring and empowering His disciples. Because that all really happened, the world was made new, and cannot return to the old. There is a new heaven and a new earth. Nothing of the old creation remains except a few tattered rags that some archeologists have found.
This is the gospel. This is what we are to proclaim. This is what we are to proclaim with boldness. How do we proclaim it? How do we attach the ropes?
We proclaim it by how we eat the bread and drink the wine. We proclaim it by singing God’s holy Word back to Him. We proclaim it by standing to hear God’s Word as it is read to us. We proclaim it by listening to the sermon in the power of the Holy Spirit. We proclaim it by confessing that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father—as we do every week in the Apostles Creed. We proclaim it with the thunderous amen. All this is offering to the Father, in Jesus’ name, and because of Christ’s righteousness imputed to His people, the offering is accepted as perfect. The Holy Spirit then takes it, and throws down the idols.