'Man's message' or the 'Pure Word of God?'

Something  that is very crucial to the whole process of interpretation is linguistic intellectual integrity.  by this i mean studying the nature of language and how it functions, studying Greek and Hebrew specifically, and studying English too!  this is so important b/c the development of your thinking is limited to your linguistic ability (every thought is comprised of words and phrases and sentences - so your ability to form new thoughts is directly related to your linguistic categories).  

to put more crassly: many preachers never even dabble in linguistics.  many preachers assume that their particular interpretation of a text (whether it was newly formed as they studied or previously held) is self-evident.  their job is to make the self-evident or obvious meaning more palatable to the audience.  Or - their job is to awaken the soul type of a thing.  "You know what to do, now go do it!"  with this kind of approach, critical exegesis is overlooked often.  this is where these men are so helpful to me because they are saying "wait a minute, maybe we haven't looked at this passage close enough....maybe it's not saying exactly what we all assume it's saying."

Now whether they are right or wrong in any given instance, what i am saying is this: 'words do not exist in a vacuum.  they are vehicles of communication.'  thus they must necessarily involve at least 2 parties - the speaker and the recipient.  As soon as you bring in more than one recipient things get sticky because each person hears a little bit differently.  Now we have hundreds of thousands or millions of recipients when it comes to God speaking - and each one brings his/her own set of ears into the equation.  so the notion of the 'pure word of God' is kind of a misnomer because words are not static - they are alive and in this case they are being received by fallible recipients, each one hearing just a little bit differently then the next.

now you may want to argue this point but before you do consider this: why preach at all?  If what we are after is the 'pure word of God' and this is in fact better than any 'man's message,' why not just get up and read straight out of the text every week?  and never make any commentary?  and of course the reason is - language is dead without interpretation.  So we are responsible to receive God's word - which means we listen, and chew and chew and chew until we start to understand the meaning behind the words.  and then we chew some more as we try to relate that meaning to our contemporary situation.  

and of course this becomes even more obvious when we consider that the purest form of the pure word of God would have to exist in the original language and if we simply stood and pronounced the Greek text every week it would have virtually zero effect on the listeners because language again is only a vehicle that must include a minimum of 2 parties.  So man's message or if i can refine this a bit to man's interpretation is always part of the equation.  It was even part of the equation in every single translation from Greek to English or any other language.  This is what translation is:  discerning the meaning of a text in the mother language, and transporting that meaning into a new vehicle in order to connect two individuals who have different vehicles but nonetheless desire to communicate with each other.  The only way to avoid this conclusion is to say that God inspired a particular translation just as he inspired the original autographs (AKA KJV only people).   But that is absurd for a number of reasons that you already know.

So God's Word always by necessity comes to have impact through the vehicle of man's interpretation.  This is why preaching is mandated in Romans 10.  and of course - there is a universality to God's message that permeates ALL language barriers, but that message always comes through fallible language not outside of it.  

on the flip side i'm not denying that there is a large difference between the person who is genuinely trying to discern the message of a given text and unfold the meaning for a people on one hand, and the person on the other who has something to say and throws a little scripture in there to make it sound like God's message (the classic proof-texting pastor).

i guess by way of application then - i don't think we should write people off because they are a strong voice and are preaching something different than us.  We have to listen and critique like the Bereans.  everyone like to point out that the Bereans were top-notch critics who did their homework.  But they also had a good sense of humility as they "received the word with all readiness of mind."  This is where it starts with me - i have to listen to a guy with the attitude of "ok God, i know i have areas of wrong thinking - expose those areas today and enlighten my heart!"  And then i engage my mind looking to be challenged, but challenging every voice to see whether it be from God or not.