Due to the pressure they feel to conform to the world, or a simple lack of respect for God’s truth, or no fear of God, I am afraid today that too many preachers and too many Christians, in general, are giving our consumer-driven world the religious entertainment and spiritual “junk food” it craves, while watering down the actual truth of God’s word that will judge all people in the end. John 12:48 – There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; the very words I have spoken will condemn them at the last day.
Yet sadly, those Christians who are truly committed to God by humbly preaching, teaching, and living out the truth of His word, are often accused of being narrow-minded, bigoted, or unloving—and those are some of the nicer labels.
May I ask you a question? Who is the person that really loves others with the love of God, and has the greatest concern for their eternal soul—the one who coddles those living in sin by totally disregarding God’s truth and its application to their life—or the one who boldly yet lovingly presents the truth of God’s word to them in hopes that they will leave the love and practice of sin, follow Christ on His terms, and thus enjoy a happy and fulfilling life in the here and now, and the eternal salvation of their soul?
J.I. Packer, in his popular book on Puritan Theology” writes: “It does not seem possible to deny that the Puritans were the strongest, just where today’s Christians are the weakest. Here were men of outstanding intellectual power, in whom the mental habits fostered by sober scholarship were linked with a flaming zeal for God, and a minute acquaintance with the human heart. All their works reveal a unique fusion of gifts and graces. Where the Puritans called for order, discipline, depth, and thoroughness, our temperament today is one of casual haphazardness and restless impatience. We crave for stunts, novelties, and entertainment. We’ve lost our taste for solid Bible study, humble self-examination, disciplined meditation, and unspectacular hard work in our study. Where Puritinism had God and his glory as its unifying center, our thinking too often revolves around ourselves as if we were the hub of the universe. In evangelizing we preach the gospel without law, and faith and forgiveness without repentance—stressing the gift of salvation and glossing over the cost of discipleship. No wonder so many professed converts fall away. In teaching on the Christian life, the habit is to depict it as thrilling feelings rather than of working faith, and of supernatural interruptions rather than radical righteousness. And in dealing with the Christian experience we dwell constantly on joy, peace, happiness, satisfaction, and rest, with no balancing reference to the divine discontent of Romans 7, the fight of faith in Psalm 73, or any of the burdens of responsibility and providential chastening that fall to the lot of the child of God. The spontaneous jollity of the carefree extrovert comes to be equated with healthy Christian living, while saintly souls of less sanguine temperament are driven almost crazy because they cannot bubble over in the prescribed manner.”
Jesus and the preachers of the Bible simply yet plainly sowed the seeds of truth and let it fall where it may. Paul said: “Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, and exhort with all longsuffering and teaching” (2 Timothy 4:2).
However, let us always remember that the power is not in the preacher or the one who is presenting God’s truth, no matter how “good” he might be. The power is in God and His word. I like the way Oswald Chambers stated it in “My Utmost for His Highest” as he explained Paul’s statement from I Corinthians 2:4 – “My speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom…” Take a look below at Chamber’s treatment of this verse:
“Paul was a scholar and an orator of the highest degree; he was not speaking here out of a deep sense of humility, but was saying that when he preached the gospel, he would veil the power of God if he impressed people with the excellency of his speech. Belief in Jesus is a miracle produced only by the effectiveness of redemption, not by impressive speech, nor by wooing and persuading, but only by the sheer unaided power of God. The creative power of redemption comes through the preaching of the gospel, but never because of the personality of the preacher.
Real and effective fasting by a preacher is not fasting from food, but fasting from eloquence, from impressive diction, and from everything else that might hinder the gospel of God being presented. The preacher is there as the representative of God—as though God were pleading through us…” (2 Corinthians 5:20). He is there to present the gospel of God. If it is only because of my preaching that people desire to be better, they will never get close to Jesus Christ. Anything that flatters me in my preaching of the gospel will result in making me a traitor to Jesus, and I prevent the creative power of His redemption from doing its work.” --Oswald Chambers
To Mr. Chambers I give a hearty, AMEN! It was Jesus who said, “And I, if I am lifted up…, will draw all peoples to myself” (John 2:32).” Stand up for truth, because when you stand up for truth you stand up for Jesus. (John 14:6.)
There are many who can preach the gospel better than me and that doesn’t concern me in the least, but there is no one who can preach a better gospel than me—because there is only one gospel—and that is the story of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ for the purpose of offering and providing salvation to all people who will truly seek to find Him. And if you truly seek Him, He will make sure you find Him. Jeremiah 29:13 - You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.
Comments
Post a Comment