That the churches today have got
plenty of speakers is not in question. Not a service passes every Sunday but there is
a speaker mounting the pulpits of our land.
There are loads of speakers; but
is there ‘a word from the Lord’?
There are many preachers in the
various churches, standing up to preach to the congregations that have called
them. But what are they preaching? Are
they bringing a ‘word from the Lord’?
Is there anyone out there who
waits upon God? Is anyone listening to
God? Is there a preacher today who is
spending time with God, and attuning his heart to the mind and will of
God? No preacher can hope to receive a
message from God who does not spend time listening to Him. And where does God speak? In the Scriptures.
Now, it is precisely here where
the problem arises. Ministers of the
gospel seem to think that all they have to do is to conduct an exegesis of a
passage, bring out the original meaning of the passage, and then share that
with his people; he concludes that that is s sermon. But it is anything but! It might be a commentary on a few verses of
text, but it is not yet a sermon. A sermon is what a minister of the Word has
when/after he has listened to God speaking to his own heart in the Scriptures,
and which is then delivered to the congregation.
Now, a sermon, a message from God
to the people, is a dynamic thing; it is throbbing with spiritual life. It is something that must first come to life
in the heart of the preacher. It first
warms his heart. It impacts on the
preacher before it can impact on the congregation. If it doesn’t, then all the preacher has to give
is a (hopefully) well-constructed is the equivalent of ‘cold tea.’ It is therefore delivered without passion,
without warmth, without feeling, and without conviction. You just have to listen to a preacher to discover
whether or not he has been with God and had spent time listening to Him. How many sermons have you listened to that
have left you utterly cold! Too many, I
presume.
But only a minister who has been
with God (see Ac.4:13) had any right or warrant to be with people. Only a preacher who has first listened to
what God has said to him through the Scriptures has any right to stand in a pulpit
and speak to people. And he is then
under a divine compulsion to say what God has said to him, nothing more, and
nothing less. He must listen to God, and
then, as His ambassador, bring His message to the people, no matter how
uncomfortable that message might be. He only
can warm the hearts of the people who has first had his heart warmed at the
fires of God’s love and grace. And the
only preacher who can speak with the authority of God is the one who has
submitted himself to that authority in the Word.
Today, we have a load of preachers
who have no authority in their preaching or for their preaching. Their sermons are not ‘cutting it’ in today’s
decadent society and church. They do not
address the sins of the present age. Corruption and compromise go on without challenge. Loose living is tolerated, and hypocrisy is
not confronted. Church members can live
without in the least sense of dedication to Christ and His Gospel.http://thebible-online.com/ Indeed, the calling to ‘dedication’ has been
lost from the Christian vocabulary. There
is too much contentment with ‘shades of mediocrity.’
Yes, many ministers have more than
one university degree, and some have two or more. But what does that matter; how relevant is
that achievement to the work of the minister.
I know of a minister who was interviewed recently for the post of
Evangelist and his interviewers mentioned the number of degrees he possessed;
the interviewee’s response was that these are irrelevant. And they are! Degrees from the world’s institutions
are no substitute for being ‘with Jesus.’
It is this that differentiates the man of the world from the man of
God. And it is this man who brings the
Lord’s message to a lost and dying world.
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