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February 22, 2023

A man came up to me after a service and said that he believed that the Lord was calling him into the ministry. I kindly assured him that the Lord was not doing that. Wow! How could I say such a thing? Isn’t that unloving? How could I so quickly pop his balloon? How could I be so certain? What if the Lord was calling him into the ministry? I knew that he was not called into the ministry because his marriage was a train-wreck, his children had no respect for him and were out of control, he could not get or keep a job and there was more. For me to indulge him for one minute that this was a possibility would have been dishonest and unloving.

It would take a series of classes to explain how we have gotten to this point where telling people the truth is now considered to be offensive. But in many situations, truth-telling is being censored and will eventually be illegal. It truly is bizarre. Publishing companies are hiring “sensitivity readers” who are going through children’s books in order to find any offensive language such as references to ugliness, fatness or clear gender identities and roles. You will find in the coming years that your version of “James and the Giant Peach” and other books like it will be quite different than the newer versions going to print.

There are examples of people who have been abusive and hateful in how they have told the truth, but those are not reasons to be silent. In fact, those are reasons to show how speaking the truth in love is the right and best practice. After all, we are commanded to do this. But, how do we protect the message of the church from following the direction of our culture? One of the primary missions of the church is clear and simple: Preach the Word.

While I may do a topical message or even a series from time to time, the primary diet of the preaching ministry of the church is what we call expositional preaching. This simply means that the preaching exposes the text. The primary meaning of the text is the primary point of the sermon. A good sermon is going to be grounded in and governed by the text. The preacher is explaining and applying the text. The emphasis is on studying the text and understanding the audience, not on creativity, humor, entertainment or impressive delivery. Preaching through a book of the Bible ensures that the sermons are saying all that God intended for his people to hear. Attempts to skip the hard parts, soften the edges, water down the truth will be obvious and while obviously offensive to God, robs a congregation of truth. We need to know the truth about ourselves, no matter how difficult that is to face so that we can run to Christ where mercy waits.

2 Samuel is not an easy book to preach through. These last few sermons have been full of murder, deceit and betrayal. The next few weeks will be more hopeful, but even those don’t last. In fact, when you look at the entire OT, there are very few portions that are hopeful. Most of the OT is the story of God’s rebellious people and unfaithful bride. I suspect this is why it is easy to skip over these parts. But we need them. We need to feel the lostness and the pain of sin. We need to own our inability to save ourselves. We need to long for grace, for salvation, for redemption, for Jesus. That way, when he reveals himself, we are ready to run to him. Truth has a way of doing that.

Grace and peace,

Bob