1. Question #1--Why do supposed Bible-believing churches hate to hear real, expository, Biblical preaching?
2. Question #2--Why do people who really can't preach the Bible do so well in ministry, while many serious Bible preachers end up doing something else?
3. Question #3--Is part of the problem that we are in a day like the days of Jermiah and Isaiah, who were basically told to preach the Truth and be prepared to be ignored?
4. Question #4--What examples can you cite from the Bible, of Godly men who were ignored, persecuted, or tossed on the shelf?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
Let me know the answers that you get
Here are my answers to my own questions.
1. It is easy to say that you believe in the inspiration, infallibility, authority, and sufficiency of the Bible, until you are forced to weigh your doctrine, life practices, and those of your church on the scales of Truth.
If any program takes the place of Holy Writ, if our discipleship and doctrine are "Bible Based," (oh what a subtle lie that is on its face), and not just plain "Bible," then we are pulling back.
That's an interesting answer.
Now here's a question or two back.
Do you believe there is too much teaching and not enough reaching?
Someone once said, "You can't get a man to trust Christ ntil you get him quaking in his boots."
Those who do not teach do not reach. When Jesus gave the great commission, He did not say to make converts, but to make disciples--
(Mat 28:19-20) ""Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 "teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." Amen."
The churches are full of "converts" who are not converted, and "believers" who don't really believe. The injunction to the man of God is to "preach the word..." (2 Tim 4:1-2).
Baldy has heard me preach--what say, Baldy?
Anonymous...
I would love to send you a cd or (if I could figure how to load it) put one on here.
Send me a PO Box and I'll send a sermon or two
2. Question #2--Why do people who really can't preach the Bible do so well in ministry, while many serious Bible preachers end up doing something else?
The skills set needed to be a popular pastor today contrast nearly absolutely with the Spiritual Gifts required to be a man of God in the Biblical sense.
Whether your are talking about the men of God of Bible times(Paul, Jesus, John the Baptist, Peter, John the Apostle, Elijah Elisha, etc.) or the men of God of times past (Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Wycliffe, the Puritan Fathers of England, Gill, Spurgeon, McClaren, Ironside), or the Bible preachers of our age (D James Kennedy, John MacArthur, John Piper, etc.), these are all serious men of God with a depth of Bible knowledge and imbued with the understanding that sinful men will never come to God unless the "Spirit of the Lord comes down...".
Funny, hale fellows well met, light and easy--that is what the itching ears of today want to hear.
(Baldy, I am sending you a CD of Brother Ronnie's sermon tonight, on Jude 20-21.)
There are two general categories here.
1. There are those who were put on the shelf very early in their ministry or before the ministry ever began, that they might be seasoned. The greatest examples I can think of are Moses, whose abortive attempt to rescue Israel at age 40 led to a 40-year exile in the desert to be prepared for his great work.
Paul, likewise, after a beginning that was dangerous as well as auspicious, was on the shelf at Tarsus for as long as 8 years. Both men came back older and wiser.
2. The second category were men who were called either late or early in life, but whose ministry inevitably led to rejection. Jeremiah, Isaiah , and the unnamed saints in Heb 11:35b-38 are certainly examples, and some parts of Paul's and Jesus' ministry could certainly be added to this category.
Post a Comment