In The Master's Service

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Preach the Word

Jonathan Crosby  From "A Soldier's Handbook"

Your calling is to "preach the word" (II Tim 4:2). Preaching the word is teaching the Bible. This does not mean dreams, anecdotes, illustrations, jokes, poems, songs, stories, plays, or chalk drawings. How many sermon enhancers did the prophets or apostles use? Ezra "read in the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense and caused them to understand the reading" (Nehemiah 8:8). Such an approach would bore today's hearers, but it was God's ordained method, and it worked (Nehemiah 8:9-12)1 In the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord took the Pharisees' doctrines one by one and demolished them (Matthew 5:7). Paul quoted seven different texts in just the first chapter of He-brews and six in the fifteenth of Romans! The flesh craves frothy counterfeits to Bible preaching, and carnal hearers rave about and remember these substitutes more than opened scriptures.

You must despise and ignore the popularity of preachers that minimize God's method to exalt their own. Self-help, positive mental-attitude chats and exciting storytelling and pompous posturing may get large crowds, but that is proof the methods are wrong (Luke 6:26; 16:15). The truth and its proper presentation will never be popular. We live in the perilous times, when so-called Christians reject sound doctrine for teachers to scratch their ears and satisfy their lusts with entertainment and fables (II Timothy 4:3-4). But what the religious world or your hearers want is irrelevant. Paul charged Timothy before God and Jesus Christ to stick to the word of God, for inspired scripture perfectly furnishes the man of God with all he needs (II Timothy 3:14-17). And it is only the word of God that builds the faith of hearers (Romans 10:17; 15:4).

Let dreamers tell their dreams. What is the chaff to the wheat (Jeremiah 23:28-32)? Let God be true, but every man a liar (Romans 3:4). Stick to Ezra's method (Nehemiah 8:8). Drop sermon enhancers, and let God's Spirit convert your hearers by His written and preached word (I Corinthians 2:1-5). Preaching is public teaching - it is not religious entertainment performed by an actor behind a pulpit to please an audience. It must always be teaching - the organized, systematic, informative, passionate, and persuasive instruction of men. How is the skill developed? It is learned by devouring God's word and meditating in it day and night (Ezra 7:6; Proverbs 22:17-21; I Timothy 4:13).