4.4: What, then, is preaching for?

From Sovereign Grace and the Scope of Election: A Comparative Examination of Attainment Theology and Grace Theology, with Particular Attention to the Question of Whether God's Elect Are Found Among All Nations and Religions

If preaching does not produce the new birth, the attainment system (and most of evangelicalism) will ask, why preach at all? The sovereign grace believer answer, and it is a glorious one: preaching is the means by which God feeds, comforts, instructs, and gathers His already-living children. "Feed my sheep" (John 21:17), sheep, not dead stones to be turned into sheep. "Comfort ye, comfort ye my people" (Isaiah 40:1). The gospel brings "life and immortality to light" (2 Timothy 1:10), it illuminates what grace has done; it does not perform the resurrection. Preaching calls regenerated children out of darkness of understanding into the joy of knowing their Savior's name, into baptism, into church fellowship, into obedient discipleship, all of which are matters of time salvation, blessed and commanded, but not the hinge of eternal destiny.

This is why the Great Commission says "teach all nations" and "teach them to observe" (Matthew 28:19-20), didactic verbs, discipleship verbs, not "regenerate all nations."