“For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake” (2 Corinthians 4:5, ASV).
The call to preach is a holy thing. It is a sacred calling that requires a consecrated heart and tongue. Men/women are appointed by Jesus Christ to feed his precious church the truth of the Scriptures. Jesus Christ has given the church: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, to build the body of Christ up in the most holy faith and prepare them for ministry (Eph. 4:11-12). Those called are to build the church up through the preaching and teaching of the Scriptures. The Scriptures are to be preached and taught so that the body of Christ can become one-in-the-faith and be able to gain knowledge of the Son of God, that is how the body of Christ becomes mature and can receive and function in the fullness of Christ—his power, his presence, his gifts (Eph. 4:13). Not being mature, and not having received the measured height of fullness in Christ, the believer is like a little child that is tossed back and forth by every wild teaching that crafty men come up with (Eph. 4:14). False teachers and false prophets are masters of error. They can seduce an infantile immature believer into believing anything they say. The spirit that possesses the speaker is supernaturally transferred through his words to the unaware believer that convinces the immature that what is being said is true. The speaker’s words will whip the immature believers up in their emotions, convinced that the error being spoken is truth from God. The childish believer believes what is being preached is true because they have not gained knowledge of the Son of God by knowing the Scriptures. If they study and know the Scriptures, they will be able to discern the errors being taught from the pulpit. Listening week-after-week Scripture taught in error only delves the infantile believer into more error. They are in error because the messages they hear are what their itching ears want to hear, they want μύθους (mýthous) myths; they want stories (2 Tim. 4:3-4). So, twisting the Scripture is like good news to the immature believer. Evil spirits are masters at deception.
Teachers and pastors are appointed to be the divine knowledge givers in the body of Christ. Without divine knowledge the believer cannot tell the truth from a lie—discernment is given as the believer becomes educated in the Scriptures. The pastor and teacher are to preach Jesus Christ as Lord, and they need to remember that they are also servants through Jesus Christ to the church; they must resist the temptation to preach about themselves (2 Cor. 4:5). The leader must remember that the reason they have their ministry of teaching and preaching is because of God’s mercy (2 Cor. 4:1). Craftiness and devilish behavior must be renounced, so is distorting the word of God, the one appointed must preach and teach the Scriptures correctly so that they reveal truth because God is watching them (2 Cor. 4:2)—the Scriptures are not to be taught to pacify the worldly desires of men, especially the one preaching them.
The minister has to remember that his sermon cannot be about himself. Preaching how close he is to God and how loved he is by other believers is not the message of Jesus Christ. Drawing attention to oneself while being appointed to be revealing Jesus Christ will not educate the congregation in the Scriptures. It will not bless the believer with the knowledge of the Son of God or cause the church to be united in the faith—the believer cannot become mature through the life and acts of the pastor. Because we are in the day and age when church-goers do not put up with sanctifying teaching, teaching that will help them grow in their salvation, but instead choose to have only skim-milk instruction and desire to be entertained by the pastor’s stories, the church has produced a generation of pastors that have become accustomed to preach more about themselves instead of Jesus Christ and the pure word of God. The message of grace and God’s sanctification is revealed through the Lord Jesus Christ, the word of God, not the pastor’s stories. Church service should not be like taking the children to the library to be entertained by, Story Time. The message that is to be preached is about Christ and not about you.
Picture: Pixabay (Alexas Fotos)
